Star Trek: 80 Secrets About Starfleet Ships You Need To Know
Listicle: 80 Secrets About Starfleet Ships You Need To Know
Transcript
00:00:0010 secrets of the USS Voyager you need to know.
00:00:04Number 10, the Aero Shuttle.
00:00:06Gonna start here with the exact same place I started for the Enterprise D. Do you remember
00:00:10when you watched Insurrection you thought, oh, a captain's yacht, a mini ship built
00:00:14into the ship, wouldn't that be a great idea for a long-running television series?
00:00:19Well not only was the captain's yacht a part of the Enterprise D, but Voyager actually
00:00:22had one of these, a really cool version of these, built into the bottom of its hull.
00:00:27It was called the Aero Shuttle, it was there, they wrote about it, they talked about it,
00:00:34they even filmed concept shots for it, but you never saw it on the show.
00:00:38It's actually insane this, because of all the shuttlecraft scenes, we got all the shuttlecrafts
00:00:42we saw get destroyed, then the whole sub-part of the Delta Flyer, them designing this separate
00:00:46ship and doing all of that, when this was literally there, this gorgeous little mini
00:00:51craft was actually there the entire time, it's just bizarre.
00:00:54And there shouldn't have even been any specific production reasons that stopped them
00:00:58doing it, because it was designed to look like the front of a Danube-class runabout
00:01:02from Deep Space Nine, thus meaning they could just reuse the sets they used for those.
00:01:07It was there, it was built, it was designed, it was rendered in lovely VFX, they had the
00:01:13props, they had the sets, and they just didn't use it.
00:01:17Number 9, the Intrepid class.
00:01:19Now despite the USS Intrepid getting a mention in Star Trek Voyager, Voyager itself was the
00:01:24first Intrepid-class vessel we ever saw, and one of only two that ever made it into Star Trek.
00:01:29But as well as that though, there was, and I absolutely cannot believe I'm going to
00:01:32attempt to do this sentence without a visual aid, the USS Bellerophon from the Deep Space
00:01:39Nine episode Inter-Arma-Emen-Silent-Leg-Es, Inter-Arma-Emen-Silent-Leg-Es, Inter-Arma-Emen-Silent-Leg-Es,
00:01:55the one where Bashir and Section 31 are the Romulans.
00:01:58Anyway, yes, that episode did completely repurpose all of Voyager's sets to have Bashir whisked
00:02:03away from the station on a vessel.
00:02:05It was just Voyager, even though it was meant to be a different Intrepid-class ship, it
00:02:08even had Neelix's kitchen, just take that out.
00:02:12Now while Voyager didn't make it into any other Star Trek series, it was weirdly in
00:02:16the trailer for Star Trek First Contact firing on a ball cube.
00:02:21Now these were not scenes that were used in any other element of Voyager, they were pretty
00:02:25much constructed entirely for this trailer because apparently at the time they hadn't
00:02:30finished the VFX works for First Contact, so just threw that in.
00:02:33Just going to hold my hand up here, little tiny juvenile young me saw that
00:02:38and thought Voyager was in First Contact and got really bummed out when Voyager wasn't
00:02:42in First Contact.
00:02:43Number 8, the environmentally friendly warp drive.
00:02:46Alright, this is one of my absolute favourite things about both the design of this ship
00:02:49and the lore of Star Trek as a whole.
00:02:51Didn't you think it was cool when Voyager's warp nacelles would go
00:02:54dunk and then it would go into warp speed?
00:02:57That wasn't just a weird design choice.
00:02:59In the Star Trek The Next Generation episode, Forces of Nature is revealed that use of warp
00:03:03travel is destroying the fabric of space-time, so Starfleet puts a limit on ever going above
00:03:08warp 5.
00:03:09Because they're trying to save the galaxy.
00:03:11Because you would.
00:03:12But the thing is, despite mentioning these warp speed limits in two subsequent episodes,
00:03:16it kind of just got dropped at a random point in time and you never heard about them again.
00:03:20That is because, even though they didn't explore this in the show, developments were
00:03:24made, strides were made forward in more environmentally friendly warp drives.
00:03:29And these variable geometry pylons were supposed to be the workaround for that.
00:03:33Basically the writers realised that they had written themselves into a stupid corner.
00:03:37Nobody can go above warp 5 and we're going to have a starship stranded on the other side
00:03:41of the galaxy.
00:03:42Goodoy!
00:03:42That's not going to work.
00:03:44So they came up with this idea that they would have a more environmentally friendly warp
00:03:47drive.
00:03:48Something to do with how the warp bubble wraps around the ship.
00:03:50Basically it just doesn't destroy space as it travels through it.
00:03:54There's a reason for it.
00:03:55Number 7, the holodecks are independent.
00:03:58Now, this is a plot contrivance if I've ever heard of a plot contrivance.
00:04:02And point of order, being a big old Star Trek fan, I've heard lots of plot contrivances
00:04:07but Voyager's holodecks were entirely separate from the rest of the ship.
00:04:12They had their own power source.
00:04:15Yeah, but reasons known only to the writers.
00:04:16They decided to make the ship run on one source of power but the holodecks to run on another.
00:04:21So even if primary and secondary systems were to fail and they were unable to reroute power
00:04:26through the auxiliary manifolds, etc, etc, the crew could still go and play Captain Planet
00:04:32or have a drink at that nice French restaurant they liked or make out with cows in Fairhaven.
00:04:38Which happened.
00:04:38Actually, I'm saying that.
00:04:39I know exactly why they did this.
00:04:40It was so they could have crises happening on the ship while people were in the holodecks
00:04:44completely unaware of it.
00:04:46There are more logical ways to do that but this is what they went with.
00:04:50Number 6, Voyager has a brain.
00:04:52Now again, this was something that was only mentioned in passing in one or two episodes
00:04:56which should have been a far bigger element of the narrative.
00:05:00Starfleet vessels had been for many, many years equipped with isolinear circuitry which
00:05:04was an incredibly, incredibly advanced way of circuits linking to each other and information
00:05:09being passed in.
00:05:10Basically kind of the same thing we have with computer chips now but just really good computer
00:05:15chips.
00:05:15However, the thing about computer chips is they are designed to replicate what goes on
00:05:19in the human brain with synapses firing and whatnot.
00:05:21But they are, of course, not as good as the human brain because the human brain is an
00:05:25organ designed to do that and works on the molecular level.
00:05:29And so in what was a pretty natural evolution in technology, they decided to make this circuitry
00:05:36run like an organic life form.
00:05:38Thus, they had these bio-neural gel packs which were responsible for transferring data
00:05:42across the ship and could do it, in theory, as quick as a brain could.
00:05:46Now, of course, the only problem with that is what is the problem with a brain compared
00:05:50to a computer full of chips?
00:05:52You can get headaches and your brain can break down and sometimes you can just be staring
00:05:56at the same screen for too long and it can hurt.
00:05:58So Voyager had loads and loads of problems with its computer getting sick.
00:06:04So over the course of the show, these gel packs, they got a virus.
00:06:07They got poisoned.
00:06:08And my personal favourite, they got a fever one time so they had to heat Voyager up to
00:06:12effectively boil it off.
00:06:15Technology!
00:06:16Number five, Voyager of Borg.
00:06:18Yes, by the time Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant, it was, yes, still the same robust
00:06:23vessel Starfleet had sent off into the Badlands that time.
00:06:26But it also came back very much a product of the Delta Quadrant because it was, in large
00:06:31parts, actually Borg.
00:06:33In Scorpion Part 2, when Seven of Nine comes aboard, she basically installs loads of Borg
00:06:38augments to the inside and the outside of the ship to make it more efficient.
00:06:42Now, of course, the crew do attempt to get rid of all that once they've got rid of all
00:06:46the Borg.
00:06:47Minus Seven.
00:06:48But the problem with Borg stuff is that Borg stuff's really good.
00:06:52Upon discovering that a lot of the ship's components were actually working slightly
00:06:55better with the Borg components still installed, Janeway ordered that they be left in place.
00:06:59B'Elona Torres, she hated this.
00:07:00She would repeatedly refer to these changes as Borg garbage.
00:07:04But then, of course, when they went to build the Delta Flyer, what did they use?
00:07:08Largely Borg components.
00:07:10And just not for me to tell Captain Janeway how to run her ship.
00:07:14I have zero track record of ever returning something from the other side of the galaxy.
00:07:19But if it was just me, given that Borg stuff replicates and takes over your face and bursts
00:07:24out your skin, I'd have got rid of all that.
00:07:28Just me.
00:07:28Number four, unlimited limited supplies.
00:07:32All right, here's a good stat list.
00:07:33In Star Trek Voyager, they established they had only 38 photon torpedoes to last until
00:07:39they got back to the Alpha Quadrant.
00:07:42How many photon torpedoes, though, do you think they fired across those seven seasons?
00:07:47Anyone?
00:07:47Any guesses?
00:07:48Anybody?
00:07:49It's an empty flat.
00:07:50The answer is 85.
00:07:52Now, all right, yes, you're sitting there going, Adam, resupplying does exist in this
00:07:56galaxy, in this far flung future.
00:07:58Yes, I know.
00:07:58I'm just talking about the fact they said they had that many.
00:08:01They never visibly showed us restocking any of them or finding ways to create more.
00:08:06And yet they fired nearly three times what they had.
00:08:10Again, not my place to tell someone how to write a show, but I would have addressed that
00:08:14personally.
00:08:15And also across those seven seasons, 10 different shuttlecraft were destroyed, as well as 15
00:08:20others either being mentioned or damaged or just present.
00:08:23So that's at least 25 shuttlecraft Voyager had.
00:08:28It's a small ship.
00:08:29I don't know where they put those.
00:08:30Again, not to be that guy, but even little tiny Star Trek nerd me, when first watching
00:08:36the episode about the Delta Flyer, sat there and said out loud at the screen, but you've
00:08:41got loads of shuttlecraft because I've always been unbearable.
00:08:44Number three, two-ish warp cores.
00:08:47Twice on Star Trek Voyager, the warp core was either rejected or stolen or something,
00:08:51and it left the ship dead in space, which is weird because they had a second warp core.
00:08:58According to this cutaway graphic, which was shown several million times during the course
00:09:03of the show, there is, of course, the primary warp core that's in engineering, but also
00:09:07further forward behind the deflector dish, this warp core, which is a warp core, and
00:09:12thus would have worked like a warp core.
00:09:14If you're still not convinced, this is the ejection port that we see the warp core leave
00:09:17the ship through, and this is the second port for the second warp core, because there was
00:09:24two.
00:09:25Now, yes, again, all right, if I was trying to get a crew all the way home from the other
00:09:28side of the galaxy and my primary warp core was stolen or damaged or nicked or just whatever,
00:09:34I probably wouldn't want to just leave it floating around in space.
00:09:37I probably would make the effort to go back and get it, but when I've got another one,
00:09:40I would use it instead of just floating there like an idiot.
00:09:44Number two, the engines could not handle the journey.
00:09:47All right, so you are a Star Trek Voyager fan, you are aware that in the first episode
00:09:50they enter the Badlands, the caretaker flings them all the way across the galaxy, and they
00:09:55work out it is going to take 75 years to get home.
00:10:01Not true.
00:10:01It's 75 years to get home if from day one they went at maximum warp in a straight line
00:10:08all the way back to the Alpha Quadrant without ever stopping.
00:10:11Now, I don't know if you've ever seen any episodes of Star Trek Voyager, but they stop
00:10:15a lot.
00:10:16They explore interesting space phenomena, they talk to new species, they end up getting
00:10:20into fights, they have their own adventures, they have their own dramas, their own romance,
00:10:23everything.
00:10:23In fact, very little of the series Star Trek Voyager is spent doing any actual voyaging.
00:10:29Now, yes, fair enough, the ship is probably not capable of sustaining a maximum warp for
00:10:34nearly eight decades, but according to the show's producers, it was realistically going
00:10:38to take them between two and four hundred years to get back to the Beta Quadrant, not
00:10:46even all the way back to Earth, just back into friendly space.
00:10:50That is, let's see, a lot of episodes.
00:10:54Number one, Voyager is the Enterprise.
00:10:57I mean, it's not, obviously it's not, it's Voyager, it's not the Enterprise, but you
00:11:01know how there's a reality away from the show in which sets have to be made and things
00:11:04have to be built and whatnot.
00:11:05Well, Voyager is technically, in that regard, the Enterprise.
00:11:09Not the one that's full of cat...
00:11:10No.
00:11:11Basically, Star Trek The Next Generation went off the air in 1994 and Star Trek Voyager
00:11:15began in 1995.
00:11:17Thus, Paramount found themselves with a load of Star Trek sets that weren't being used
00:11:22and now had a big need for brand new Star Trek sets.
00:11:26Thus, they got their repurposing hats on and did some work.
00:11:30Now, the bridge of the Enterprise D, that was destroyed completely and the bridge for
00:11:34Voyager was created on the same set.
00:11:36They share no similarities, they were built from the ground up.
00:11:39However, sickbay, the transporter rooms, the crew quarters and all the corridors, whilst
00:11:43being given a major facelift, were just the exact same sets redressed.
00:11:48And so too was engineering, although that had a major, major facelift.
00:11:52They added an entire second floor.
00:11:53They brought in that, you know, like the cell area where Deanna Troi tried to fling herself
00:11:58that time.
00:11:58They built that into Voyager's engine room.
00:12:00They made it look completely different, but it was the same set.
00:12:04This is my absolute favourite one, by the way.
00:12:05Those windows that Janeway spent so much time fixing all the ship's problems by just staring
00:12:11out of them.
00:12:12Ten forwards windows flipped upside down.
00:12:15Yep.
00:12:15And as much as the Lord giveth, the Lord also taketh away, because loads of the sets used
00:12:19in Star Trek Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis were repurposed from Voyager.
00:12:23In fact, in First Contact, one of those best scenes where Robert Picardo is utilised as
00:12:28a doorstop, not a doctor, it's literally Voyager's sickbay.
00:12:32Is there an entire list to be done on Star Trek sets that were actually other Star Trek
00:12:38sets?
00:12:38Let me know in the comments.
00:12:40Rest in peace, USS Shenzhou NCC-1227.
00:12:44Now let's analyse the crap out of you.
00:12:46Number 10.
00:12:47Old Reliantable.
00:12:48One of the lasting contributions that initial Star Trek Discovery showrunner Brian Fuller
00:12:54had was, via the Shenzhou, he wanted to create something that would tie into Star Trek's
00:13:02aesthetic past, but was still progressing toward the future.
00:13:06At Fuller's request, the design team used the USS Reliant from Star Trek II The Wrath
00:13:11of Khan as a jumping off point when designing the Shenzhou.
00:13:15He wanted audiences to get that feeling that they've seen ships like this in the past.
00:13:22According to Fuller, we wanted the Shenzhou to be a much more traditional design, so that
00:13:27when you got to the Discovery and it looked different, you wondered why it was so different.
00:13:33However, there was another reason Fuller wanted to invoke the Wrath of Khan in this
00:13:39Starfleet design as well.
00:13:40The Reliant has a wonderful history of minority representation.
00:13:44We thought it would be a nice nod to echo its design with the Shenzhou because we wanted
00:13:49to give it a context that non-white Star Trek fans might appreciate.
00:13:54For Star Trek Discovery, the Shenzhou would be a step toward additional representation
00:14:00in Star Trek, both in the name of the ship itself and in her captain, Captain Philippa
00:14:06Georgiou.
00:14:07I wanted an Asian female captain calling the ship the Shenzhou after the Chinese space
00:14:12station felt like a wonderful way of acknowledging the scientific achievement of the Chinese
00:14:17community.
00:14:18Number 9.
00:14:19The Upside Down.
00:14:21As the rest of the art department under Mark Worthington worked on the Discovery itself,
00:14:26veteran Trek designer John Eaves worked with the jumping off point that the Reliant was
00:14:33to be used as something of an inspiration to both root and expand on the fact that the
00:14:40Shenzhou has its place in Star Trek aesthetic history.
00:14:46Not only that, but he wanted the look of it to establish both where it came in the lineage
00:14:51and in the timeline of Star Trek itself.
00:14:54According to Eaves, you'll see some elements of the NX-01 from the past, you'll see some
00:14:59elements of the Reliant from what's to come.
00:15:01I felt it was important to try and tie these timeframes together in detailed form to put
00:15:07the ship into context.
00:15:08Eaves produced dozens of sketches of the Shenzhou, adapting it, switching it, changing it.
00:15:15However, with most of them having the warp nacelles on top at this point, when Brian
00:15:21Fuller and Mark Worthington both departed the series, only then was Eaves able to pin
00:15:27down the final look of the Shenzhou and flip it upside down.
00:15:31Todd Czerniawski was the one that finally gave good direction on it.
00:15:35I did one sketch he liked, and we flipped it over and then angled the nacelles.
00:15:39Number 8.
00:15:39The 50s.
00:15:402250s.
00:15:42A huge aviation history buff, John Eaves took inspiration not simply from Star Trek ships,
00:15:47but from aircraft from real world history as well.
00:15:51According to Eaves, production designer Todd Czerniawski, he gave the idea of incorporating
00:15:58elements of the old B-plane from history into the Shenzhou, which goes a little way toward
00:16:05explaining the unique secondary hull design on the ship.
00:16:08Also, according to Eaves, I thought about something that Tony Moore at Edwards Air
00:16:13Force Base told me about, which was blended body aircraft, where everything smoothly transitions
00:16:19into itself.
00:16:20So the hull blends into the wings and so forth.
00:16:22I thought I'd try to do the same thing, so my hull blended with the saucer, and that
00:16:27ended up being a nice idea that the producers really responded to.
00:16:31The design of the Shenzhou also mimicked vintage aircraft by the inclusion of various
00:16:36aerodynamic fins along the hull and nacelles.
00:16:40This was directly inspired by the 1950s Cold War era Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.
00:16:47A bank of lights to illustrate the ship's registry was also borrowed directly from
00:16:521940s aircraft carriers.
00:16:55This kind of primitive addition was added to all of Discovery's pre-TOS ships, including
00:17:02the Discovery itself.
00:17:03Number seven, underslung hero.
00:17:06As the Star Trek Discovery team were trying to figure out exactly what the look of the
00:17:10series was going to be, what the ships were going to be designed like, and how they were
00:17:15going to approach everything, the actual design of the Shenzhou itself was used to
00:17:20test new ideas.
00:17:22Early renderings of the ship contained many different configurations and liveries.
00:17:27There were some that had highly accented turquoise colour, and some that were closer to the dove
00:17:32grey of the original Matt Jefferies USS Enterprise.
00:17:35There was a much more serious stealth bomber look also proposed that would have had faceted
00:17:41hull panels facing back against each other.
00:17:44Ultimately though, a more traditional Aztec type pattern was used for the hull of the
00:17:49Shenzhou, while even at this stage they still weren't exactly sure where the bridge was
00:17:55going to go.
00:17:55There were a few different ideas for where the bridge would go in the Shenzhou, including
00:18:00a note from the art department that said why not put it in a notch at the very front of
00:18:05the ship.
00:18:06That however was swept to the side once the producers said let's put it under the primary
00:18:11hull.
00:18:11According to John Eaves, the notes we got said its bridge should be located at the bottom
00:18:15of the ship.
00:18:16There was no explanation for it, but I thought okay, let's go for it.
00:18:19The unique location of the ship allowed them to build a practical set that was raised slightly
00:18:25with windows going down under this.
00:18:28These would be looking out onto what would of course later be added in post, CGI star
00:18:34fields almost completely surrounding the crew.
00:18:37Following the release of the series, John Eaves commented on the unusual bridge location
00:18:42and the subversion of fan expectations.
00:18:44When the studio made a teaser trailer to introduce the series, they started by showing the Shenzhou
00:18:50upside down.
00:18:51The Star Trek audience naturally thought they were looking at the top of a ship.
00:18:55Then they showed the ship rotate.
00:18:57Everyone was really surprised when they realised that the bridge was on the bottom.
00:19:01It was a very cool concept and it worked really well.
00:19:05Number six.
00:19:06Sooner or Lateral.
00:19:07While all five previous live action Star Trek shows had been filmed down at Paramount Studios,
00:19:14Discovery was the first, but not the last, to be filmed at Pinewood Studios in Toronto,
00:19:18Canada.
00:19:19There, a series of elaborate sets were created, like the Discovery's bridge, the Shenzhou's
00:19:23bridge, a large amount of corridors, sickbay engineering, a transporter room, and of course
00:19:33Lorca's menagerie.
00:19:34Because the premiere episodes, The Vulcan Hello and The Battle of the Binary Stars,
00:19:37were going to be located almost exclusively on board the Shenzhou, there had to be a way
00:19:43of reconfiguring the sets so that they could look like they were from two different ships.
00:19:48Now, simple repainting of the corridors allowed the Shenzhou's corridors and the Discovery's
00:19:53corridors to stand in for one another.
00:19:56A reconfiguration of Lorca's menagerie gave us the brig of the Shenzhou, but it was Discovery's
00:20:02transporter room that went through the most extensive redress for these episodes.
00:20:09It was given a unique lighting scheme, it was given a circular transporter control,
00:20:14and it was given lateral vector emitters, which are more primitive and designed to be
00:20:20used on the much older USS Shenzhou.
00:20:23Fun fact about those lateral vector emitters, in Star Trek's great history of reusing props,
00:20:28those emitters would turn up again in the episode Brother aboard the USS Hiawatha.
00:20:33They would also appear again in the episode The Red Angel as phase discriminators.
00:20:40Number five, A Long Walker.
00:20:42With the script for The Battle of the Binary Stars calling for an entire slew of Federation
00:20:47starships to face off against the Klingon fleet, John Eaves worked not just to bring
00:20:52the Shenzhou to life, but all of the other ships as well.
00:20:55According to Eaves, whenever we were waiting for feedback on the Discovery and the Shenzhou,
00:21:00we'd do concepts for fleet ships on the side.
00:21:02I'd keep drawing those, and we ended up with 60 or 70 of them.
00:21:06I think they said they were going to take six or seven of the fleet ships and build
00:21:10them.
00:21:10If I'm not mistaken, Brian Fuller picked all of the fleet ships, and he'd always
00:21:14go for the more unusual shapes.
00:21:16In order to explain these ships' enormous visual differences from the contemporary
00:21:2223rd century ships in the rest of Starfleet, Eaves and Cherianowski worked together to
00:21:29come up with a backstory.
00:21:30We eventually came up with a theory to explain why these new ships didn't have round nacelles
00:21:35and looked a bit out of place.
00:21:37We came up with this idea that it was like the old Edwards Air Force Base in the 1940s.
00:21:41All these companies were creating these new X-planes, and even though the purpose was
00:21:46the same, they all looked drastically different.
00:21:49So we created this whole scenario that this was like an experimental stage.
00:21:54Up to that point, the Vulcans had been influential on matters of ship design, but now the humans
00:21:59had decided that they'd had enough of that influence, and they wanted to go on their
00:22:02own.
00:22:03Consistent with that ethic, Cherianowski and Eaves decided to name each of these ships
00:22:08after test pilots of those X-planes, specifically choosing the Shenzhou to be a Walker-class
00:22:15ship, named for American test flight and X-15 pilot Joseph A. Walker.
00:22:21Number four, Good Shepherd.
00:22:23As the first year of Starfleet Discovery developed in the writers' room, the producers
00:22:27alerted the art department to the fact that another ship was required.
00:22:31This is outside of the Discovery, Shenzhou and the fleet.
00:22:35This ship, the USS Curie, was intended to be another experimental Federation starship,
00:22:40and so a unique design was required by John Eaves.
00:22:43Returning to early sketches of the USS Shenzhou, Eaves flipped the ship over, moved the bridge
00:22:49back a little bit, and placed the engines above the primary hull.
00:22:52The basic lines were a rejected Shenzhou, but I reworked it to be the Curie.
00:22:57Bridging the gap between the Shenzhou and the brand new Discovery, Eaves came up with
00:23:02the Shepherd-class Curie, which would later be renamed the Coralla, and then dropped from
00:23:08the show entirely.
00:23:09Deciding that the experimental ship would be the same as the Discovery herself, the
00:23:13Crossfield-class USS Glenn was introduced in the episode, Context is for Kings.
00:23:19The Curie, aka the Coralla, would go on to appear at the Battle of the Binary Stars,
00:23:24and then would stand in for the USS Gagarin in the episode, C.V. Paquem, Parabellum.
00:23:30So, no, you weren't just seeing an upside-down Shenzhou in those episodes, but close.
00:23:36Number three, Memory Beta.
00:23:38With two full episodes dedicated to being on board the Shenzhou, Star Trek Discovery's
00:23:43producers put a little more time into coming up with backstories for the ill-fated crew.
00:23:49Alongside series regulars and returning characters like Captain Philippa Georgiou,
00:23:53Commander Michael Burnham, Lieutenant Commander Saru, Lieutenant Junior Grade Kayla Detmer,
00:23:58and Ensign Danby Connor, the crew of the Shenzhou were filmed out with unique character and
00:24:04alien designs to really make them stand out.
00:24:07You had the blue-skinned Lieutenant Troke, you had the cybernetic Lieutenant Troy Agenuzzi,
00:24:12and Ensign Jira Narwani, who would wear the distinctive snail-shell helmet that would
00:24:17appear quite a few times throughout the rest of Discovery's run.
00:24:20While most of the Shenzhou's crew go unnamed on screen, a lot of them actually are given
00:24:25extensive backgrounds in the tie-in novel, Desperate Hours, by author David Mack.
00:24:32According to Mack, this was a deliberate effort by both himself and the Discovery
00:24:36producers to give this crew a sense of reality which would make what happens to them in the
00:24:44episodes hit home.
00:24:46Most of them I developed on my own, along with detailed character bios, backstories,
00:24:50quirks, interests, etc.
00:24:52Those were then submitted to the show via Kirsten Beyer for approval.
00:24:55Some, such as Gant, Detmer, and Genuzzi, ended up being used on the show.
00:25:00A few, like Connor and Brit Weaton, were established by the show's writers.
00:25:04Also, Kirsten tells me that the Shenzhou Bridge crew actors were given my bios of their characters
00:25:10to provide a foundation for their performances.
00:25:132.
00:25:14Contact with Kaminar
00:25:15In addition to providing them with brief histories, the novel Desperate Hours also depicts the
00:25:20Shenzhou crew teaming up with Captain Christopher Pike and the USS Enterprise to take on a mystery
00:25:26on the planet Sirsa 3.
00:25:28Despite the aforementioned effort to align the creation of the novel's characters with
00:25:33the show's writers and what we see on screen, Desperate Hours is, like almost all of the
00:25:38Star Trek novels, a non-canon adventure.
00:25:42Still, the Shenzhou did have at least one other mission that we know of.
00:25:47Sort of.
00:25:482018's Short Trek The Brightest Star sees Philippa Georgiou, then a lieutenant, answer
00:25:55the hail of Saru, who is at this point still living on Kaminar.
00:26:01She lands in a shuttle which is marked SHN-03, clearly indicating that she was serving aboard
00:26:08the Walker-class USS Shenzhou 16 years before the events of The Vulcan Hello.
00:26:14This would make the Shenzhou the first ship to encounter the Kelpians.
00:26:19However, the subsequent Discovery episode, The Sound of Thunder, would retcon this and
00:26:25say that Georgiou was serving aboard the USS Archimedes at the time, thus removing
00:26:30the Shenzhou from this very important historical event for no reason that I can really think
00:26:37of.
00:26:38And, to add insult to injury, just in case one might think, oh, maybe that's a bit
00:26:43of a continuity issue, no.
00:26:45They removed SHN from the shuttle.
00:26:48Number one.
00:26:49Into the Wild Blue Tinted Yonder.
00:26:51As mentioned earlier, and in many, many, many other lists, Star Trek sets are so often reused
00:26:59and redressed and turned into something else.
00:27:02While the Shenzhou's bridge was originally designed to just be that, in the true spirit
00:27:07of Star Trek, it would then go on to be adapted for two different locations you might not
00:27:13have noticed, and we're here to destroy the illusion for you.
00:27:16For Star Trek Discovery Season 2, the bridge of the Shenzhou was heavily revamped and redesigned
00:27:22to become the bridge of a Section 31 stealth ship.
00:27:26This was under the direction of new production designer Tamara Deverell.
00:27:30According to Deverell, we revamped those great bones from the Shenzhou set.
00:27:34The bottom of the bridge had been glass, allowing the crew to look out into space, and it was
00:27:39all green screen in that area.
00:27:40There was a bunch of space down there, so I thought, let's take away the glass floor,
00:27:44clean out the green, and make this a two-tiered ship with ladders going up and down.
00:27:49While the Section 31 ship would make numerous appearances in the second season, it did not
00:27:55follow Discovery through the wormhole at the end of Season 2, so a new use had to be made
00:28:02for this bridge set.
00:28:04In Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery, the bridge of the Shenzhou would become Starfleet headquarters.
00:28:11So many elements of the bridge had been lost or scrapped or removed along the way, but
00:28:17that central dome at Starfleet headquarters is the original dome from the Shenzhou's bridge.
00:28:24Well, my friends, that was not the last time that it was used, because as we've seen in
00:28:29the released clip of Una Chen-Riley's court-martial from Strange New Worlds Season 2, the room
00:28:35got reused again as the courtroom.
00:28:3810 secrets of the USS Cerritos you need to know.
00:28:44Desperately.
00:28:45Number 10, California, here we come.
00:28:47Now, I don't know if anybody picked up on this, but the Cerritos was supposed to remind
00:28:51you about the state of California.
00:28:53Cerritos itself is a place in California.
00:28:56It was, of course, a California-class ship.
00:28:58All the other California-class ships were named after places in California.
00:29:01There was various California items hidden across the ship itself, including this in
00:29:05the captain's ready room.
00:29:06A very nice touch there, in my opinion.
00:29:08There were so many references to California in Lower Decks that if you combined them all
00:29:14together, it would make up the same number as the amount of references in 15 seconds
00:29:20of any friggin' Red Hot Chili Peppers song.
00:29:22I wasn't kidding about all the other ships in the class being named after places in California
00:29:26as well.
00:29:26I don't really know too much about the place, but Paul's written it all down here, so I'm
00:29:30just going to read it off for him.
00:29:33The USS Merced is named after a place in central California.
00:29:36The USS Alhambra, named after a city in San Gabriel Valley.
00:29:40The USS Roubideau, named after somewhere in Riverside County.
00:29:43The Solvang is a place near Santa Barbara.
00:29:46And according to him, there's a great Oktoberfest, so I'll have to ever check that out if I'm
00:29:50ever allowed to leave the house.
00:29:52And the reason for that is because Mike McMahon knows California like the back of his hand.
00:29:55He worked there for years.
00:29:56He moved there.
00:29:57He had loads of jobs there, and he wanted to name all these little ubiquitous little
00:30:01ships, these non-grand, non-spectacular, industry, workhorse parts of the fleet after
00:30:09these places in California.
00:30:10He just thought that'd be a nice touch, and it is.
00:30:13In fact, specifically, he named the Cerritos after a car dealership called the Cerritos
00:30:18Auto Square.
00:30:19They've got a very catchy little jingle that goes, yes, Cerritos!
00:30:23Because, get it?
00:30:24Like, yes, Cerritos?
00:30:27America's weird.
00:30:27Number nine, Old Reliantable.
00:30:33Reliant.
00:30:33Very good.
00:30:34Very good.
00:30:35By looking at the design of Cerritos, it would look right at home next to a Galaxy-class
00:30:38ship, and probably look right at home next to a Nebula-class ship as well, the other
00:30:42one invented in the next generation.
00:30:44But apparently, the inspiration comes from Mike McMahon's favourite ship in Star Trek,
00:30:48which doesn't really feel very next-generation-y.
00:30:52We've given it away with the title of this, but it was the USS Reliant from Star Trek
00:30:562, The Wrath of Khan, and of course, later seen in other series of Star Trek.
00:31:00He loved that one, and he kind of wanted the Cerritos to look a bit like it.
00:31:04And the mad thing is, despite the fact that the Reliant is kind of like the opposite of
00:31:08the classic Star Trek design, that the cells are below and it's kind of already compact
00:31:12instead of long and sleek, it has actually gone on to inspire a lot of different ships
00:31:17in the franchise.
00:31:18Apparently, the Nebula-class took its inspiration from there.
00:31:21Originally, the Malachowski-class we saw in Discovery took a page from its book, and even
00:31:25the USS Shenzhou itself was supposed to look like the Reliant.
00:31:29So even though it's traditionally not a very Star Trek shape, it is kind of the Star
00:31:34Trek shape.
00:31:35I mean, that said though, the saucer section and the deflector dish are clearly just Ctrl
00:31:39C, Ctrl V from the Enterprise D itself, so you can see all the different elements combining
00:31:44for that one.
00:31:44Number eight, live and let livery.
00:31:48Paul, you live on the other side of the planet to me, and just sometimes that is a good thing.
00:31:53Now in a classic callback to Star Trek's greatest ever trope of just reusing all of
00:31:57their props, all of the other California-class ships in Star Trek Lower Decks are identical
00:32:04to the Cerritos, except for one small difference, and that's the colour has been changed on
00:32:09both the LCARS panels and the outside of the ship itself.
00:32:13Basically, it's usually red in Starfleet, but the revelation in Lower Decks is the reason
00:32:17for that is because all the ships you've seen so far are designed for command-based
00:32:21missions.
00:32:21The Cerritos, on the other hand, is purely a support vessel, so it gets yellow, and as
00:32:26a result, all the other support vessels get different colours.
00:32:28But the Merced has blue markings on the outside, clearly saying that it is a science vessel,
00:32:32whereas two of the other ones have red saying that they are part of the command thing as
00:32:36well.
00:32:36It's just Star Trek likes to have that little visual reference point for you, so it's
00:32:40cool they put it on the outside of the ships as well.
00:32:42I absolutely love this one, and I completely missed it the original time watching the
00:32:45show.
00:32:45So LCARS, LCARS, whatever you want to call it, has a very, very distinct visual style
00:32:51that we've seen across the next generation, partly in Deep Space Nine, and of course,
00:32:55in Voyager.
00:32:56You know exactly the thing I'm talking about, it looks like this.
00:32:58It is just as Star Trek as Star Trek can be.
00:33:01Now, if you watch Lower Decks, you will see that the ship has been lovingly recreated
00:33:04to look like the ships of that era, and all of its computer consoles are precisely as
00:33:09you would expect them to look.
00:33:10But look a little further, my friends.
00:33:13Look to the walls, look to the floors, look to all the soft furnishings, and you will
00:33:17see that LCARS design transmits across every single thing on that ship.
00:33:24Look at it!
00:33:25That's, that's really clever!
00:33:26I want my bedsheets to look like that.
00:33:28That is, that is actually, that is, these are my spare bedsheets, by the way.
00:33:31The good ones are in the wash, so don't be, don't be commenting like, oh my god,
00:33:34really, Paisley?
00:33:35Oh.
00:33:35Number six, old, but like, future old.
00:33:38Now we don't know the exact age or when it launched yet, that's yet to be revealed
00:33:42in Lower Decks, but the fact that this is a junky old, clapped out, constantly in need
00:33:47of repair ship is one of the long-running jokes in this show.
00:33:50Just going to refer specifically to an interview Mike McMahon did with Trekyards, because he
00:33:53kind of explains this better than I would be able to in my usual rambling style, so
00:33:58just, let's get a picture of him.
00:33:59The name of the game on the Cerritos is functionality.
00:34:02They have to be able to open it up and change it when it's not being used for diplomacy
00:34:05or speed or for battles.
00:34:06What the ship is good at is being taken apart and being utilised.
00:34:10It's kind of like a trusty toolbox.
00:34:11It looks good when it's doing it because it's Starfleet, but that's the mentality
00:34:15behind it.
00:34:15Like, a lot of people said initially when they saw the design that they thought nacelles
00:34:18being quite weird didn't really fit with it, but McMahon goes on in that interview
00:34:22to say that, well, yeah, it probably isn't even the nacelles it was originally designed
00:34:25to have, they've just stuck those on as they've upgraded it over time, which, when
00:34:29you think about it, is a really nice little design quirk.
00:34:31Number five, overpowered and undergunned.
00:34:34Now, at only 20 decks high, the Cerritos is on the smaller side of the ships we've
00:34:38seen in Star Trek.
00:34:39Like, yes, Voyager only had 15, but the Enterprise E had, like, 26 or 27, depending on who was
00:34:44speaking, and, of course, the Enterprise A had 78 because they gave Will Shatner a
00:34:48pen and then just left a room.
00:34:50Now, what's interesting about this is that when you're in the saucer section, everything
00:34:53looks small and neat and tight and compact, but when you get into the drive section, everything
00:34:58starts to look big and huge and cavernous.
00:35:00Take, for example, the engine room is a lot more like things we've seen in the Abramsverse.
00:35:05That took 300 takes to say, by the way, because I kept saying it looks far more like the
00:35:09engineverse in the Abrams room.
00:35:11And the reason for that, and, again, this comes straight from Mike McMahon's interview
00:35:14with Trek Yards, is because the ship needed to have a lot of power, yet it still needed
00:35:19to be quite a small ship.
00:35:20So if you take a huge engine, which can produce a massive warp core, and you cram everybody
00:35:25into it next to it, that's kind of going to be really bad.
00:35:28So it needed to be separate from the main body of the ship.
00:35:30So, yes, when they needed to extend the warp bubble core thing, they could do that.
00:35:34When they needed to extend the deflector dish, yes, they could do that.
00:35:37But, by and large, most of the time, they just wanted people to be sat away from it.
00:35:41So the design actually reflects the fact it is massively overpowered for its size.
00:35:45Number four, the Y of the pylons.
00:35:47Anyway, something that does slightly contradict that whole idea of they wanted to keep people
00:35:51away from the massive power level that it actually had, but is still interesting nonetheless,
00:35:56is how you get from the saucer section to the drive section, because they're not directly
00:36:01connected.
00:36:02Like pretty much every Star Trek ship we've ever had, you sort of look at that and you
00:36:05can see how you would walk from the bridge to the engine room, because it's just one
00:36:10big ship, and you go whirl the windows and the lights.
00:36:12It just makes sense.
00:36:13But on the Cerritos, what are you doing?
00:36:15Are you going down the legs?
00:36:17Is there a secret invisible tube?
00:36:19No, again, according to Mike McMahon at Trek Yards, the turbo lift shafts just go down
00:36:23the struts and then through the warp nacelle pylons, which is part of the reason they look
00:36:27the way they do.
00:36:28They're designed to be insulated.
00:36:30They're designed to be protective, so you can safely travel through them without getting
00:36:33electrified.
00:36:34And if you're wondering why there are giant big parts of those pylons cut out, it's because
00:36:38they're not being used for anything.
00:36:40They're just literally turbo lift shafts.
00:36:41So why would you need them filled in?
00:36:43Like it saves resources.
00:36:44It saves space.
00:36:45It just makes everything lighter, which doesn't really make sense in space.
00:36:49But they don't need to be filled in, so they wouldn't be.
00:36:51Well, I guess it does make sense, because he did go on to say that you want less material
00:36:54that's able to vibrate, which actually does fit with thermo and aerodynamics.
00:36:59So I guess it does make sense.
00:37:00But I still stand by the fact that it looks like garden furniture.
00:37:03Number three, about those dune buggies.
00:37:06Now, one thing that always jumped out at me was the fact that, yes, this looked exactly
00:37:10like it was set right in the middle of the next generation.
00:37:12But it isn't.
00:37:13It's a full 15 years after.
00:37:17So it's like way, way, way in the future.
00:37:20And you look at some of the design choices they made, like, for example, the shuttle
00:37:23craft.
00:37:23They're all boxy and not very sleek and slender.
00:37:25They look exactly like the janky ones they have in the next generation and not the really
00:37:29cool ones they had in Nemesis or in Voyager or things like that.
00:37:33So why?
00:37:35Well, the simple reason for that is because there is limited resources in the galaxy.
00:37:39So when Starfleet gets brand new shuttle craft, they go to your Enterprises and to your Voyagers
00:37:44and to all the other big flagships.
00:37:46What do you think the Cerritos gets?
00:37:48It gets the old stuff because it's still perfectly usable.
00:37:51It just doesn't need to be on the front lines like everything.
00:37:54The tricorders, the replicators, the panels, the shuttle craft, as I mentioned before,
00:37:58the phasers, everything.
00:37:59It's just stuff that's been in Starfleet for a long, old time.
00:38:03It's not broken.
00:38:04There's no sense throwing it away.
00:38:06It still works.
00:38:06It just doesn't need to be on the Enterprise.
00:38:09That said, though, not everything it gets is necessarily old or clapped out.
00:38:12Some stuff is still brand new and exciting, just not being used at the minute, hence why
00:38:17they have an Argo Loon buggy.
00:38:20Obviously, everybody involved in Star Trek Nemesis was so embarrassed about having that
00:38:24on the ship that they just chucked it to the next support vessel that wanted a Dune buggy.
00:38:29Well, there it is.
00:38:30Number two, nice aft.
00:38:32Just a really quick, funny one, this.
00:38:34I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the emblazoned name bit of the USS Cerritos is
00:38:39not where it is on normal Star Trek ships.
00:38:42It's not at the front, is it?
00:38:43You know, when you get the opening title credits and it's panning around the front and you
00:38:46get to see USS, where it's not.
00:38:48Not there, is it?
00:38:49It's on the back of the ship, which is, when you think about it, a really weird place to
00:38:53put it.
00:38:53Reason for that is because, by and large, most people seeing the Cerritos up close aren't
00:38:58going to be in some kind of performative space.
00:39:01They're not going to be glaring at it, marveling at its wonder.
00:39:04They're going to be getting towed by it.
00:39:07Yep.
00:39:08The majority of times people will need to see the registry in the name of that ship
00:39:12is because they're getting towed along by it in a pinch.
00:39:16So they put the registry on the back so that they can see that.
00:39:19Number one, there be dolphins here.
00:39:24Oh, this is the best.
00:39:25Genuinely, when I heard they were doing lower decks and, of course, when you do something
00:39:27animated, all of a sudden, budget is not a problem.
00:39:29You haven't got to think about making sets.
00:39:31You haven't got to think about practicalities.
00:39:32You haven't got to think about what you really can do with the show and instead just do whatever
00:39:36the hell you want to do.
00:39:37That's what I was thinking about.
00:39:38And so, of course, my first thought was Cetacean Ops.
00:39:41Now, for those of you who are brand new here, Cetacean Ops is part of the Enterprise D,
00:39:45where dolphins, yes, actual dolphins, serve in Starfleet to help with complex navigational
00:39:51and mathematical problems.
00:39:52Like, they solve them because they think in three-dimensional space and they're incredibly
00:39:56intelligent.
00:39:56It was written into the very fabric of Star Trek The Next Generation, but never used because,
00:40:01again, real-life show.
00:40:03How do you make an entire room full of dolphins?
00:40:05And I say room.
00:40:06It was like three decks high.
00:40:07It was referenced in yesterday's Enterprise.
00:40:09Johnny the Forge asked somebody if they have seen the dolphins in another episode, but
00:40:13we never got to see it.
00:40:14And yet we still haven't seen it, even on a show where they just have to draw it.
00:40:19But I am very pleased to report that speaking to Wil Wheaton, yes, that Wil Wheaton, of
00:40:23the Ready Room, Mike McMahon, confirmed that there is a Cetacean Ops aboard the USS Cerritos.
00:40:29They just haven't showed it to us yet.
00:40:33They are not promising, but they are hopeful that sometime in Season 2, we will get to
00:40:38see that.
00:40:39And by we, I mean me.
00:40:41Flippers crossed.
00:40:42That's Paul's joke.
00:40:4410 Secrets of the First Contact Fleet.
00:40:48Number 10.
00:40:48Akira, Steamrunner, Norway, and Sabre.
00:40:52Oh my.
00:40:53Obviously, the main star of Star Trek First Contact is the beautiful Sovereign Class Enterprise
00:41:00E that was designed by John Eaves.
00:41:02If you've even walked near one of the lists about the ships before, you're going to know
00:41:07who John Eaves is.
00:41:08Another name comes into the Star Trek pantheon in Star Trek First Contact, and that is Alex
00:41:15Yeager.
00:41:16He was the Industrial Light and Magic visual effects director on Star Trek First Contact,
00:41:20and we have him to thank for these new designs of ships that rock up in the Battle of Sector
00:41:27001.
00:41:28Yeager was given a bit of a task, which is you have to introduce, along with the Sovereign
00:41:33Class, which was being done, as I say, by Eaves, introduce these new designs of ship,
00:41:37and they have to be instantly distinguishable from the new vessel.
00:41:42He had a bit of a challenge ahead of him.
00:41:44He said,
00:41:44The goal with all of those ships was to make them look completely different from the Enterprise
00:41:48as we were introducing the E in that film, and they didn't want people going, wait, which
00:41:53was the Enterprise?
00:41:53Therefore, the very radical layouts on those four ships, but still keeping true to the
00:41:58basics of starship design.
00:42:00You've got to bear in mind, Alex Yeager was 22 at the time.
00:42:04At 22, I was still figuring out button up flies on my jeans, and yet he rocks up with
00:42:10these four designs, and Rick Berman, Jonathan Frakes, and production designer Herman Zimmerman
00:42:14all go, that one, that one, that one, and that one.
00:42:17Boom.
00:42:18They make it in the film, and they have almost all of them turned up again later on in Star
00:42:25Trek.
00:42:25Number nine, ready for her close up.
00:42:28Probably the most popular of these new designs is the Akira Class USS Thunderchild.
00:42:34Now, in the film, we don't know the name of the ship because it's actually not printed
00:42:38on the saucer section.
00:42:40The registry is NCC 63549.
00:42:44Now, during the production process, Yeager actually said that the Akira Class quickly
00:42:49became not just a favorite, obviously, of fans after the film was released, but it was
00:42:53a favorite during the production process as well.
00:42:56The producers initially planned to have at least one ship that we could get closer to
00:43:00camera.
00:43:01That was the Akira, so it got the most attention to detail.
00:43:04So Yeager treated the Akira Class the same way would any other hero ship.
00:43:08That means that you could get up close and personal with this ship.
00:43:12The way think about the other films, you know, you get these beautiful pan shots of
00:43:16the Constitution Class 1701.
00:43:18You get those pan shots when we're in space dock.
00:43:21And of course, the Enterprise D in Generations as well, because that's where the bulk of
00:43:25the action is.
00:43:26Of course, you're going to take more time.
00:43:28And that's how popular the Akira Class was, is they gave it that level of attention in
00:43:34the film, even though it doesn't have an awful lot of screen time in the released
00:43:38movie.
00:43:38Now, the design was actually inspired by the USS Reliant, the Miranda Class that, of course,
00:43:43had been introduced back in Wrath of Khan.
00:43:46Those had the nacelle swept underneath with a roll bar over the back, and both of those
00:43:51ideas were incorporated into the Akira Class.
00:43:54Added to this was a veritable sh** ton of firepower specifically designed to take on
00:44:01the Borg.
00:44:01According to Yeager, this was my gunship battlecruiser aircraft carrier.
00:44:05It had 15 torpedo launchers and two shuttle bays, one in the front with three doors and
00:44:10one in the back.
00:44:10I really got into it with that one.
00:44:12The whole idea was that the front bay would be the launching bay and that they could return
00:44:16and come in the back because they'd be protected by the rest of the ship.
00:44:20Number eight, Days of Thunderchild.
00:44:23If you're wondering where the name for the USS Thunderchild comes from, it comes from
00:44:28that, the War of the Worlds by H.G.
00:44:30Wells.
00:44:31It was based on the RMS Thunderchild that fatefully has an encounter with the Martians
00:44:37in this novel.
00:44:38Now, the class of ship, the Akira Class, came from Yeager's own love of the 1988 Japanese
00:44:44anime film Akira.
00:44:46We've already gone into the amount of firepower that was packed into this ship in the previous
00:44:51entry, but Yeager had another task, which was where and when does the Akira Class fit
00:44:57in to the rest of the Federation fleet?
00:45:00Now, according to Yeager, the Akira Class, it has the same escape pods as the Enterprise
00:45:05E, the Sovereign Class, but it actually has a more similar hull plating to the Enterprise
00:45:11D.
00:45:11Now, that was to suggest that it was commissioned after the Galaxy Class entered service, but
00:45:17before the Sovereign Class entered service.
00:45:20It becomes an immediate fan favorite, but it also becomes one of the producer's favorite,
00:45:24which almost led to the design being taken wholesale and used for the NX-01 in Enterprise.
00:45:33If you want that full story, go and check out our Secrets of the NX-01 list, our interview
00:45:39with Doug Drexler, and you'll get all the juicy details there.
00:45:42Number seven, background action.
00:45:45Now, while the Akira gets treated to the full and fancy hero ship treatment, the other ships
00:45:50do not get anywhere near as much love.
00:45:53Now, these include the Steamrunner Class, which was originally called Streamrunner.
00:45:58Did not know that before I was recording this list.
00:46:00That was the USS Appalachia.
00:46:02Then there was the Norway Class, USS Budapest, and the Sabre Class, USS Yeager.
00:46:08These were deliberately designed to be more angular and less detailed so that they could
00:46:13be there to kind of fill out the Federation fleet without having to necessarily get up
00:46:18close and front with the camera.
00:46:20That way, when the scenes were being rendered, these models were not given anywhere near
00:46:27the same level of detail as the other ships in that scene.
00:46:31While you would never be able to notice it in the actual film, like you'd want to zoom
00:46:37in times a million or something like that, the actual paneling textures were borrowed.
00:46:43For example, the Sabre Class, right, the paneling on that was borrowed from the digital model
00:46:48of the USS Enterprise D that had been used in Star Trek Generations, and the Norway Class
00:46:54was given the texturing of the ILM version of the USS Defiant.
00:46:59Did somebody mention Defiant?
00:47:01Number six, Defiance.
00:47:04Now, as you'll know, there's already a list and an article on the USS Defiant.
00:47:08I strongly advise you to go and check it out.
00:47:10This ship is just full of wee secrets.
00:47:12But its story could have ended with Star Trek First Contact.
00:47:16Now, while it's unbelievably cool seeing the Defiant on the big screen, yes, I still
00:47:21remember that.
00:47:22Yes, I'm probably older than a lot of people watching this video.
00:47:24It was, according to Ronald D. Moore, who's one of the writers on the film, a necessary
00:47:30plot device to get Worf to the solar system to battle the Borg.
00:47:36So, I mean, it's fantastic.
00:47:37You see it's firing the pulse phasers and it's running alongside of the Borg.
00:47:41Unfortunately, once we see it, it's gone through a bit of a challenge.
00:47:47This presented an issue when it came to behind the scenes.
00:47:52For example, when Ronald D. Moore sent the script to DS9 producer and eventual showrunner
00:47:58Ira Stephen Bear, heads were butted.
00:48:01Somehow, we had implied that the Defiant was destroyed or something.
00:48:05We didn't mean to destroy the Defiant, but Bear just ranted at me for destroying the
00:48:09Defiant and it was really his only note on the whole script.
00:48:12So, we went back and we were very careful that the Defiant actually did survive.
00:48:17Now, there is indeed a scene which shows Worf being, well, beamed off the Defiant.
00:48:22Cameo by the lovely Adam Scott, for all you Parks and Rec fans out there.
00:48:25Worf then insists on coming to the bridge of the Enterprise E and asks immediately about
00:48:30the Defiant.
00:48:31Picard says, adrift but salvageable.
00:48:33And then we get our tough little ship joke, absolutely love it.
00:48:37Do you know who didn't love it?
00:48:38Ira Stephen Bear.
00:48:39He was quoted as saying, I didn't see the point in bringing it on just to kick the crap
00:48:43out of it.
00:48:44Number five, cannon fodder.
00:48:46So, we've addressed the new ships that appeared in Star Trek First Contact, but what was going
00:48:50on with the rest of the fleet?
00:48:52Because there's some very recognisable ships dotted out there as well.
00:48:56Now, of course, these include the Miranda class, the Oberth class and the Nebula class.
00:49:01Star Trek First Contact was actually the last on-screen appearance of the filming models
00:49:08of the Miranda and Oberth class starships.
00:49:10These had both made their debut appearances in Star Trek Two and Three, respectively.
00:49:14So they'd been around for a long time at this point.
00:49:17The recycled ships were fairly difficult to make out on screen, but dialogue does refer
00:49:23to the USS Bozeman.
00:49:24If you remember, cause and effect from the Next Generation's fifth season featured
00:49:29an augmented Miranda class vessel, which was then called the Soyuz class USS Bozeman under
00:49:36the command of Kelsey Grammer's Captain Morgan Bateson.
00:49:38Brannan Braga hails from Bozeman, Montana, so likely the inclusion was more just a cameo
00:49:43to where he's from, but it also then ties quite nicely into what the Bozeman was doing
00:49:49once it got to the 24th century.
00:49:52This will be expanded on in the novel Ship of the Line, which again featured Captain
00:49:56Bateson, and also in Decipher's Star Trek customisable card game, which is basically
00:50:01Star Trek's answer to Magic the Gathering in their First Contact expansion pack.
00:50:05Number four, Technobabble.
00:50:08It was established that the full length of the Enterprise E was 2,248 feet.
00:50:15The diameter of the Borg Cube was 9,000 feet, and the diameter of the Borg Sphere was 1,500
00:50:21feet.
00:50:22So they're established in size by the designers.
00:50:26The rest of the new ships in First Contact, however, literally had little blank spaces
00:50:31beside them for anyone to just come up with the actual size of these ships.
00:50:35However, as these vessels started to pop up in reference novels and encyclopedias, for
00:50:41example, Michael and Denise Okuda's second edition Star Trek encyclopedia, it was left
00:50:46to these kind of franchise heavyweights, the Okudas, Rick Sternbach, and Doug Drexler to
00:50:51come up with a scaling system for these vessels.
00:50:54First up is the Akira class.
00:50:56Listed in DS9's technical manual in 1998, it stated that the Akira was a heavy cruiser
00:51:02class starship that was designed at the Antares Fleet Yards on Antares IV, was designed for
00:51:09a crew of 500, and measured 464.43 meters in length.
00:51:15According to the same resource, the Norway and Sabre class vessels were both listed as
00:51:20being created in space dock above Earth.
00:51:23The Sabre class could only carry 40 officers, while the Norway was listed as being able
00:51:27to carry 190.
00:51:29However, both vessels were listed as being 364.77 meters in length, which doesn't really
00:51:36make any sense if one of them can carry almost four times the amount of crew as the other.
00:51:42According to DS9's visual effects supervisor, David Stipes, the Sabre was scaled down to
00:51:48about 190 meters in length, which makes it just longer than the USS Defiant.
00:51:52The Steamrunner class took the longest to get an actual size, because it was in fact
00:51:57the Eaglemoss starships collection that put 356 meters on the length of it.
00:52:04Basically, it was the bastard stepchild of the rest of the fleet.
00:52:07Which is a bit of a shame, really.
00:52:08I like the Steamrunner class.
00:52:10I seem to have been the only one.
00:52:12356 meters in length.
00:52:14Number three, a Star Wars story.
00:52:17Yep, I have just uttered the very heated words when it comes to the two franchises,
00:52:23please, we're over that.
00:52:24You're probably all well aware at this stage that a very special ship makes a blink and
00:52:30you'll miss it cameo in the Battle of Sector 001.
00:52:34Yeah, the Millennium Falcon is actually present fighting the Borg Cube.
00:52:37And no, I'm not just making that up.
00:52:39And no, that's not something that was digitally added years later.
00:52:43ILM's John Knoll had just come off working on the special edition trilogy of Star Wars
00:52:49in the 90s and, as a bit of a joke, added the Millennium Falcon into the Battle of
00:52:54Sector 001.
00:52:55So no, it's there.
00:52:56It is 100% in the film, much like R2-D2 is in two of the J.J. Abrams Kelvin films.
00:53:05It's kind of like, like it or not, Star Wars is in Star Trek.
00:53:08Star Trek Online designer and YouTuber E.C. Henry actually took the time to design what
00:53:14the Millennium Falcon would look like if it was paneled with Starfleet livery.
00:53:20And actually, it looks really, really cool.
00:53:22Now, the link to that will be in the description of this video.
00:53:25It's it's pretty sweet, actually.
00:53:27Definitely different.
00:53:29Listen, otherwise you've got a Corellian freighter fighting the Borg.
00:53:31You know, you make up your mind.
00:53:32There were other ships shown to be fighting the Borg, but not in the actual film.
00:53:37The first theatrical trailer for Star Trek First Contact pictured USS Voyager.
00:53:42Obviously, that never made it into the final film.
00:53:44So I would imagine what that was is it was a placeholder.
00:53:48They needed to get the trailer out.
00:53:49The effects weren't ready on the film yet.
00:53:51So they stuck in what they had, which actually makes an awful lot of sense, really.
00:53:56So that's why we get four, you know, at least in headcanon, maybe Voyager fought the Borg
00:54:01Cube as they left the Delta Quadrant and then arrived in the Alpha Quadrant.
00:54:06You heard it here first, folks.
00:54:07Number two, fleeting appearances.
00:54:10After Star Trek First Contact wraps production, ILM gave the digital assets to Paramount Pictures
00:54:16for them to use for Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Star Trek Voyager.
00:54:19You know, sounds great in theory.
00:54:21However, all of the technology that ILM was using was actually quite different to what
00:54:26Paramount Pictures were using.
00:54:28So the first contact ships had to be rebuilt again, basically from scratch.
00:54:31Bear in mind, the Akira class got the most love.
00:54:34So actually, that one was easiest to slot back into Star Trek, which is why the Akira
00:54:39class is the one that probably makes the most appearances in Deep Space Nine, debuting
00:54:43in Call to Arms, along with the Sabre and the Steamrunner class ships.
00:54:47But it also appears in Star Trek Voyager, most prominently in the episode Message in
00:54:52a Bottle.
00:54:53As I mentioned, the Steamrunner and Sabre class ships also appeared in both DS9 and
00:54:59Voyager, but their appearances, they're much less frequent and they are much, much
00:55:04like further away from the screen because they're just not being rendered to the same
00:55:09quality.
00:55:10They were in the final shot of Star Trek Voyager as well, escorting that lovely Intrepid class
00:55:15ship back to Earth.
00:55:16We were then robbed of a scene immediately afterwards and Voyager ended too early.
00:55:20I'm over it.
00:55:22I'm over it.
00:55:23There was, of course, a very missing ship in DS9 and Voyager.
00:55:29Number one, lost with all hands.
00:55:32The Norway class made its only appearance in Star Trek First Contact.
00:55:36It never appeared in Star Trek Deep Space Nine or in Star Trek Voyager and hasn't
00:55:41appeared after that in the franchise either.
00:55:43DS9's David Stibes gave a very cryptic response.
00:55:46Basically, he just said, I believe we didn't include the Norway class for technical reasons.
00:55:51That's it.
00:55:52So whether that means the CGI file itself was corrupted or frankly, they just didn't
00:55:57bother, we never got it on screen.
00:56:00Almost 25 years later on, again, along comes Eagle Moss.
00:56:05Eagle Moss replicated all four of the ships, including the Norway class for its ships collection.
00:56:14And according to Ben Robinson on Twitter, this is what led directly to the Steamrunner
00:56:19class being included in Star Trek Picard's second season.
00:56:23If that's the case, it might take a while, but hope is not lost that we may see the Norway
00:56:28class again in action.
00:56:31I've got my fingers crossed and I bet some of you do as well.
00:56:3510 secrets about the USS Stargazer you need to know.
00:56:39Number 10, the pressure of legacy.
00:56:41The design of the USS Stargazer brought together a few old names from Star Trek, along with
00:56:47a few of the newer ones.
00:56:48The team was headed by production designer Dave Blass and saw the return of John Eaves
00:56:52and Doug Drexler, and also Sean Hargreaves, who designed the Enterprise A in Star Trek
00:56:57Beyond, Jeffrey Mandel, who was part of the design team of Star Trek Insurrection, and
00:57:03of course Michael Okuda.
00:57:05The team was tasked with designing a ship that would be both new for the 25th century
00:57:11era of Star Trek Picard, but also evocative of the original design by Andy Probert and
00:57:17John Dwyer.
00:57:18According to production designer Dave Blass, we needed to update the classic USS Stargazer
00:57:23design that was seen briefly in the TV series Star Trek The Next Generation, and update
00:57:27the design of a Starfleet starship into a new century.
00:57:30How would we update the technology to work for modern audiences while also staying true
00:57:34to the original Next Generation feel?
00:57:36Despite this new Stargazer's fidelity to Captain Picard's original command first
00:57:40seen in the battle, this creature was very much its own thing.
00:57:45Now, it was both evocative of that original Constellation-class, but also a new design
00:57:51of a TOS-era Radiant-class USS Stargazer that was designed by fan model-maker Bill Krauss.
00:57:59Number nine, a command with baggage.
00:58:02In the show, Picard says that this Stargazer is a refit of his original Stargazer, and
00:58:08you might look at the design and be like, ah, no, these are a little bit too different.
00:58:13But according to showrunner Terry Metallis, that is actually true.
00:58:19Like the TMP Enterprise, it's a massively updated refit, he said.
00:58:22I like to think of it as the story of the broom.
00:58:25If one day you replace the handle and another day the brush, is it still the same broom?
00:58:29We thought of it as a vessel endlessly repaired and upgraded, brought in line with current
00:58:33future tech, so that somewhere underneath all the lights and polish are the bones of
00:58:38Picard's original ship.
00:58:39Does that make sense?
00:58:40I don't know, but I sure like the spirit of it.
00:58:42Whether it makes sense or not, the producer still felt that the Stargazer was a minor
00:58:49vessel in the pantheon of Starfleet names.
00:58:52Dave Blass had this to say about the ship's registry.
00:58:56I dropped the hammer on this one.
00:58:57The Stargazer is an important ship, but it does not hold the same status in the Federation
00:59:01that the Enterprise had.
00:59:03I didn't feel it was warranted.
00:59:04Because then every ship gets it and it becomes a thing, the Stargazer didn't have that
00:59:10legacy.
00:59:11Therefore, there was no A at the end of the registry.
00:59:15Number 8.
00:59:16What does a starship need with a carpet?
00:59:18The interiors of the Stargazer were designed by Dave Blass and Sean Hargreaves, who as
00:59:23previously mentioned designed the Enterprise A for Star Trek Beyond.
00:59:26Constructed at Santa Clarita Studios in Santa Clarita, California, there was a main bridge
00:59:31built along with a corridor set and an observation lounge set.
00:59:34According to Dave Blass, the bridge was constructed 10 feet wider than the Enterprise E bridge
00:59:40so that they could take advantage of the new widescreen format that Star Trek Picard was
00:59:44going to be shown in.
00:59:45Designed to evoke Herman Zimmerman's Star Trek The Next Generation sets, which carried
00:59:49over into the movies as well, there is one thing that is missing from the Stargazer.
00:59:56Ample carpeting.
00:59:58According to Sean Hargreaves, there's been discussion on some of the online threads about
01:00:02whether there should have been carpet.
01:00:03I disagree wholeheartedly.
01:00:05This isn't a cruise ship, nor a living room.
01:00:07When it gets down to carpet, no carpet, how shiny the floors are, etc, it's missing
01:00:12the point.
01:00:13Number 7.
01:00:14Observation lounge observations.
01:00:16It sounds very strange to say the word observations without a certain word in front of it.
01:00:29Accomplished fan model maker Bill Krause was tasked with creating practical models of the
01:00:34Sagan-class USS Stargazer as well as the Constellation-class USS Stargazer seen in The Next Generation.
01:00:41He was also tasked with creating a TOS-era version of the Stargazer, and all three of
01:00:48these models were used as set dressing in the observation lounge of this modern Stargazer.
01:00:53Other elements that were used as well were the original plaque from the episode of the
01:00:58battle and, of course, a model of Captain Rios's original ship, La Serena.
01:01:03According to production designer Dave Blass, the lounge set was a technological achievement
01:01:07in itself and featured a real view outside the windows.
01:01:10Custom conference table featured a gigantic integrated OLED screen as well as integrated
01:01:16lighting.
01:01:17The chairs were custom designed to harken back to the Enterprise-E version of the chairs.
01:01:20The highlight of the set is the panoramic view out the back of the ship with giant windows
01:01:25showcasing the aft of the Stargazer.
01:01:27Number 6.
01:01:28Because callbacks.
01:01:29According to set designer Sean Hargreaves, the Stargazer was a group effort, but the
01:01:34overall look was accomplished by John Eaves and Doug Drexler.
01:01:38As they say, it takes a village.
01:01:39I just want everyone to get credit where credit is due, it's only fair.
01:01:43If you like the exterior of the Stargazer, that's John Eaves through and through with
01:01:47Doug finessing.
01:01:48Known for creating exhaustively detailed starships, like the NX-01 for Enterprise, Drexler included
01:01:54things like phaser strips, transporter emitters, tractor beam emitters, and including a shuttle
01:02:00bay as well between the two dorsal nacelle struts at the back of the Stargazer.
01:02:05The Stargazer also possessed two Warpfield Governors located on the dorsal side of the
01:02:10saucer section, starboard and port.
01:02:13Not sure what a Warpfield Governor is?
01:02:15Well, there's a long and detailed explanation for it, but basically it's an Easter egg.
01:02:18The TOS movie era ships always contained these.
01:02:23If you think of it, both the Reliant and the TMP Enterprise had them at the rear of the
01:02:29saucer section.
01:02:30So basically, it's just a nice nod to previous designs.
01:02:33Number 5.
01:02:34Stylegazer.
01:02:36Alright, this one's not technically about the ship itself, but go with us here for a
01:02:40second.
01:02:40Season 2 of Picard introduces a new Starfleet uniform, something that really seems to be
01:02:46happening every three episodes in Star Trek since 2017.
01:02:50Created by costume designer Christine Clarke, Starfleet's 2400 uniforms are an improved
01:02:56version of the same uniforms from Star Trek Picard Season 1.
01:02:59According to Clarke,
01:03:00Our Starfleet uniforms in Season 1 were admittedly created in a bit of a haste, and though they're
01:03:05perfectly lovely designs, me and our producers felt we could deliver something more grand
01:03:10for Season 2.
01:03:10With Starfleet playing a much more featured role in Season 2, I wanted to pick up where
01:03:15we left off, but create a sleeker, more sophisticated design for 2400.
01:03:19This new spin on Starfleet's DS9 Voyager and TNG era uniforms features a dimensional
01:03:25raised ink delta across the shoulders, an asymmetrical style jacket with a division
01:03:32colour running down the trousers as well.
01:03:34It was meant to be evocative of the monster maroons that were introduced in the Wrath
01:03:38of Khan, just one of the many callbacks to the original series in Star Trek Picard.
01:03:43Number 4.
01:03:44Starfleet.
01:03:45Okay, again, this one's not technically about the Stargazer itself, but this kind
01:03:49of flows, right?
01:03:50There's been an awful lot said about the arrival of the Federation fleet in the first
01:03:56and last episodes of Star Trek Picard Season 2.
01:03:58There's even a list just waiting to be written about this fleet itself.
01:04:05Uh, Paul?
01:04:07But let's touch on the fleet briefly here, because it's still one of the best parts
01:04:10of Picard's second season.
01:04:12According to an interview with Dave Blass with Inverse's Ryan Ritt, the different
01:04:16ships that appear in Star Trek Picard Season 2 was effectively a direct response to the
01:04:23angry outcry of fans from the last episode of the first season of Star Trek Picard.
01:04:29I know that there's a lot of practical reasons why things happen, but I was like,
01:04:32okay, I wonder if there's a way to solve this problem, to turn this obstacle into an
01:04:36opportunity.
01:04:37I found these ships from Star Trek Online and I was like, damn, these are really good
01:04:41looking.
01:04:41I was like, why are we not doing something here?
01:04:43With limited resources available to the effects department, Star Trek Picard turned to Star
01:04:48Trek Online, sourcing several of their ships to appear alongside the Stargazer in the pilot
01:04:55and the final episode.
01:04:57The show also received aid from Eaglemoss's Star Trek Starships collections by providing
01:05:01digital models of ships like the Akira class.
01:05:04All of this in response to the so-called copy and paste fleet that appeared in the Season
01:05:101 finale, A In Arcadia Ego Part 2.
01:05:13So, next time you wonder if an angry rant about Star Trek Starships is worth something
01:05:18on Twitter, love you Dave.
01:05:21Number 3.
01:05:22Elkar's Mania.
01:05:24Fitting Star Trek Picard's second season now in the 25th century, new user interfaces
01:05:30were created by Andrew Jarvis and Twisted Media for display on the bridge of the USS
01:05:35Stargazer.
01:05:36These referenced back to the 24th century Elkar's of Star Trek The Next Generation,
01:05:40but also pushed the aesthetic forward.
01:05:42For Season 2, Jarvis and Twisted Media were joined by Michael Okuda, the man who originally
01:05:48created the Elkar's, lovingly dubbed Okudograms, for Star Trek The Next Generation, and Doug
01:05:54Drexler, who presented the production with original assets from the shows.
01:05:59Like the original Okudograms of the Next Generation DS9 and Voyager, Star Trek Picard's Elkar's
01:06:05interfaces were integrated into the USS Stargazer's bridge using static backlit panels and animated
01:06:12live feed monitors, OLEDs, integrated into the ship's consoles and interfaces on set.
01:06:18This time though, the set designers were able to give the ship's computers an even more
01:06:21futuristic look by creating curved screens throughout the bridge.
01:06:25These curved Elkar's displays were achieved live on set using real projection and non-reflective
01:06:31flex glass screens.
01:06:32According to Systems Integrator and Computer Playback Supervisor Todd A. Marks, having
01:06:36this wide display area, no one else has ever done something with the kind of complex curves
01:06:41on a practical set before.
01:06:43Number 2.
01:06:44Normalised Star Trek Insurrection References
01:06:46Sometimes myself and Paul might disagree on some of the points on these lists, but here
01:06:51is one where I am in complete agreement.
01:06:54Star Trek Insurrection is good, actually.
01:06:57Of the four Next Generation movies, it is the one that is closest to an episode of the
01:07:02Next Generation.
01:07:03While that is often used as a criticism, I think of it as a compliment.
01:07:08It captures the pace and thoughtfulness of the Next Generation, features a beautiful
01:07:13score by Jerry Goldsmith, lush visuals by cinematographer Matthew Leonetti, and loads
01:07:19of John Eaves-style spaceships, including a slew of Starfleet auxiliary vessels.
01:07:25While references to Star Trek Insurrection have been light in the years since its release,
01:07:30the Sona are name-dropped in Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and the Ba'ku are given a shout
01:07:34in Star Trek Discovery's fourth season, Star Trek Picard's second season contains
01:07:40a big nod to Star Trek Insurrection, the Stargazer's complement of shuttlecraft.
01:07:46Glimpse very briefly in the Stargazer.
01:07:48The shuttlecraft that ferries Admiral Picard to the Stargazer is based on the Type 11 design
01:07:54of shuttlecraft that was created by John Eaves for Star Trek Insurrection.
01:07:58This design was dubbed the Type 14, and was nearly identical to the Type 11, although
01:08:03it featured an additional antenna assembly on the dorsal side of the ship and Stargazer-style
01:08:09nacelles.
01:08:10Also of note, the Type 14 shuttle in this episode is actually graced with its own name,
01:08:15the USS Jameson, named after astronaut Mae Jameson, who appeared as transporter operator
01:08:21Palmer in the Next Generation episode, Second Chances.
01:08:25Number one, see you in the funny pages.
01:08:27As of the recording of this, we are yet to know if the USS Stargazer is going to appear
01:08:32in the third season of Star Trek Picard.
01:08:35We can say, however, that it has continued to fly in the printed, digital, pages of IDW's
01:08:43ongoing comic series, Star Trek Stargazer.
01:08:46In that series, there is a new officer in command, taking over for acting Captain Seven
01:08:51of Nine.
01:08:52This is the Andorian officer Makara, who invites Admiral Picard aboard the Stargazer to relive
01:08:57some of his glory days.
01:08:59As for the filmed adventures of the USS Stargazer, we will have to see, but it is continuing
01:09:04a legacy that several of the other ships in Star Trek's history have passed down, which
01:09:10is, its sets have been redressed and redesigned to serve as the USS Titan A in the third season.
01:09:19With so much history from the inception of Star Trek going into the design of the Sagan
01:09:23Class Stargazer itself, it's only fitting that the Stargazer would lend its own advances
01:09:29to a new generation of starship.
01:09:33You know, I think there might be a list in that.
01:09:36Ten secrets of the USS Discovery you need to know.
01:09:39Number ten, Crossfield Class.
01:09:41I always forget about this now, but we didn't actually see the USS Discovery until like
01:09:45three episodes into the first season, which was kind of weird.
01:09:48Anyway, when we were introduced to it, it was the most advanced, sleekest, sexiest,
01:09:53nicest, weirdly wrong uniformed ship in the fleet, the Crossfield Class.
01:10:00Just in case you're interested, and I know that you are, the name is an homage to the
01:10:04American test pilot of the X-15 rocket, I think that's right, Albert Scott Crossfield.
01:10:10They just took his last name.
01:10:11That simple.
01:10:12And the thing is, while one of the major criticisms of Discovery was just that's not what ships
01:10:17looked like back then, they do kind of address this in the second season when the Enterprise
01:10:20crew comes aboard, and even though the Constitution Class is the cream of the Federation crop
01:10:25at the time, because Discovery is a testbed for new technologies, the crew even remarks
01:10:29that, wow, this is where Starfleet puts its pennies, you see?
01:10:33They listened, they got it.
01:10:35Anyway, point to my point, we do only ever see one other Crossfield Class ship in all
01:10:39of Star Trek, and that is technically the doomed USS Glenn, the sister ship that she
01:10:43goes to find.
01:10:43You remember that one, the thing's crawling around in the dark.
01:10:45Anyway, it's not a popular class by any stretch of the imagination, but it does look
01:10:49nice.
01:10:49Number nine, Titanic Inspirations.
01:10:52Now, yeah, we all got excited because this was the first time we'd seen a new hero ship
01:10:57in a very, very, very, very long time.
01:10:59I don't count the Abrams one, that is a reimagining of the classic.
01:11:03Obviously, it was probably the NX Enterprise, the last brand new hero ship we got to set
01:11:07our eyes on, and we were like, yeah, that's really cool, a brand new ship.
01:11:12But the big Star Trek fans, the bad nerds like us went, no, it's not quite new.
01:11:18Now, the little sneak look we got at it at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, yes, was very
01:11:23exciting, but it was an unfinished version of the model, and a lot of people looked at
01:11:27that and thought, hang on, I've seen this somewhere before, because they had.
01:11:30That ship that we saw then, and indeed the finished version of the USS Discovery itself,
01:11:34takes so many design cues from Ken Adams and Ralph McQuarrie's iconic reimagining
01:11:40of the USS Enterprise for the never, ever got made Star Trek Planet of the Titans.
01:11:46This.
01:11:47This was the reimagining for the USS Enterprise that was going to debut in the new series
01:11:52and the new films in the 1970s that ultimately never got made.
01:11:54But all the concept art is still kicking around, and they took so...
01:11:58Look at it!
01:11:59That is Discovery, isn't it?
01:12:00Except it's got nice long, sleek nacelles.
01:12:03It isn't quite as made of Duplo as that one is.
01:12:07There is actually a fully fleshed out script and how the whole story was going to go for
01:12:10that stuff, and yes, a lot of the elements did get incorporated into the motion picture
01:12:14eventually, but not the core premise of the story, which we might end up doing a video
01:12:19on if you're interested in the comments.
01:12:21Number eight, non-Trek influences.
01:12:23All right, there are two major things that are not Star Trek related that contributed
01:12:27to the design aesthetic of the USS Discovery, and I will give you all 10 seconds right
01:12:32now to guess what they are.
01:12:45Wrong!
01:12:45It's this aeroplane.
01:12:47Yeah, the XB-70 Valkyrie.
01:12:49It's got the gooseneck.
01:12:50It's got the A-shape.
01:12:52It was pretty much a large source of inspiration for how they made that ship look, along with,
01:12:57of course, the never used Enterprise from Planet of the Titans.
01:13:02Why?
01:13:02I don't know.
01:13:03I do not know, but there it is.
01:13:05Oh, and the second thing, what was your guess for that?
01:13:07That's wrong as well.
01:13:08It was James Bond's submarine car.
01:13:10I'm not.
01:13:11I'm not.
01:13:11I wish I was making that up.
01:13:12I'm not.
01:13:13Number seven, an early version lives on.
01:13:16All right, now I could hear you all shouting through the camera when I brought it up.
01:13:18Yes, when they showed us that preview at Comic-Con of the new Discovery for the new show, a lot
01:13:24of people did notice that it wasn't, how do I put this, at all finished.
01:13:29It looked rubbish.
01:13:31I'm not being unkind there, like they hadn't finished doing it, it wasn't in the highest
01:13:34res and all this, and yes, we were excited for a new show and the promise of all that
01:13:38came with it, but it just, it kind of, like, I think I could have made that.
01:13:42If you'd given me a powerful enough computer and enough time, I could have probably made
01:13:46that animation, and I suck.
01:13:48It's nobody's fault.
01:13:49Obviously, they just hadn't finished all the ideas for it.
01:13:52It's just weird that they would then put an unfinished version out, because they still
01:13:55had like over a year of tweaking the overall design left to do.
01:13:59And, of course, they did tweak the overall design.
01:14:01They added much nicer nacelles.
01:14:02They rendered it in a higher quality for a start.
01:14:05That is not the finished version.
01:14:07That is an early version, and unfortunately, because they released it, it's out there.
01:14:13Like a lot of the marketing materials and a lot of the packaging and a couple of the
01:14:16toys and a lot of the postcards, all the collection stuff that came out before the show pretty
01:14:21much looks like this version of the ship.
01:14:24Now, if you cast your mind back to us doing the Enterprise-E version, when they hadn't
01:14:27settled on the design for the Deflector Dish and all the marketing materials went out with
01:14:30the wrong Deflector Dish, so technically makes it more rare or interesting, I don't know.
01:14:34Discovery is plagued.
01:14:36Plagued by this, because so much stuff went out when it looked like sh**.
01:14:42Number six, another used Starship.
01:14:44All right, now, if you've watched these videos before, you will know we love to do
01:14:47this one, because basically, they don't like to waste money when they're filming
01:14:50Star Trek.
01:14:51Who would?
01:14:52So they tend to reuse lots of sets for lots and lots of different things.
01:14:57And you'll also remember, of course, that the first few episodes of Discovery are not
01:15:00set on Discovery.
01:15:02They are set on the USS Shenzhou, which is a different ship entirely.
01:15:05If you look at the bridge, it looks like a different ship.
01:15:08Not entirely, but it is definitely a different ship.
01:15:12And also, if you look at the USS Riker's erection or whatever it was at the end of
01:15:17Picard, that's also a different ship.
01:15:19Anyway, bottom line here, they're all the same set.
01:15:22And yeah, even the Enterprise, which looks completely different, that is the same set.
01:15:27Basically, they realised they were going to have to film loads of stuff on bridges over
01:15:30the coming however many years.
01:15:32So they made it all very modular, so that it would move around and you could redress
01:15:36it depending on what ship it was supposed to be.
01:15:39Now, this is not exactly a massive design secret, this.
01:15:42I just think it's really clever how they've managed to get four, probably five or six
01:15:46of you include all the little one-offs they included as well, into one set.
01:15:50Pretty much every time you look at a bridge now in Star Trek, it is just the Discovery's
01:15:54bridge, just with a different layout or a different thing here or there.
01:15:58So well done, them.
01:15:59Number five, engineering.
01:16:01Sort of.
01:16:02Okay, so I'm not saying Star Trek is formulaic, but tends to be when you set a show on a starship,
01:16:07you have the same locations that you use no matter what series it is.
01:16:11Like, all the action takes place on the bridge.
01:16:13We know that.
01:16:14And the captain has their little room where they go and do all their little things and
01:16:16their arguments with people.
01:16:17There's a meeting room where all the plans are come up with and all the drama happens.
01:16:21There's a sick bay where people go to die.
01:16:23There's all the quarters where people go to...
01:16:26And there is the engine room.
01:16:29We love the engine room.
01:16:31Except, uh, you've never seen Discovery's engine room.
01:16:34Nope.
01:16:35Nope, you haven't.
01:16:36No, that's not the engine room.
01:16:38That is not the engine room.
01:16:39You have not seen the engine room ever.
01:16:41We have never been to engineering.
01:16:44We've seen the Enterprise's engine room on Discovery.
01:16:47Sort of.
01:16:48It was the little tie-in thing.
01:16:49It looked like this.
01:16:50And that's a fairly recognisable warp core.
01:16:52It looks not dissimilar from the engine rooms we know and love in Star Trek.
01:16:56But this, on Discovery, is not the engine room.
01:16:59That is Stamets Lab, or it's called, like, Engineering Test Bay Alpha, or something like
01:17:04that.
01:17:04It is not, and I'll say it again, not the engine room.
01:17:07Pretty vital part of the ship.
01:17:09I-M-H-O.
01:17:10The engine room, the warp core, where you go to warp.
01:17:13And yes, I know Discovery tends not to use this warp core.
01:17:14It just goes bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop,
01:17:17stuff instead.
01:17:18But we're kind of moving away from that.
01:17:19The whole idea is that it's really bad.
01:17:21And it's bad for Stamets, even if he's got his hand in the gloop.
01:17:24And I really hope nothing happens to him at the end of the season.
01:17:26Otherwise, this rant I'm on will seem very, very dated already.
01:17:29But anyway, yeah, never seen it.
01:17:31Never seen it.
01:17:32Number four, the spookiest ship in the fleet.
01:17:35This is a really short one.
01:17:36This- now, obviously, I know I've just said the spookiest ship in the fleet.
01:17:38And there are about 10 scarier entries for that.
01:17:41The aforementioned USS Glenn, for one.
01:17:43My god, everybody was dead.
01:17:45And the lights are out.
01:17:45But technically, Discovery is the spookiest ship in the fleet.
01:17:48Because do you remember how it was originally pitched as, like,
01:17:52a Star Trek version of American Horror Story?
01:17:55NCC-1031.
01:17:57Or to put that another way, the backwards dating format that Americans use for Halloween.
01:18:04Number three, 1970s colour palette.
01:18:07Now, full disclosure, I didn't actually notice this until the end of season two.
01:18:12Discovery pulls up right next to the Enterprise,
01:18:14and they've got that little bridge for everybody to run across.
01:18:16I was like, wow, Discovery's really, like, bronze, isn't she?
01:18:20You don't really notice until she's next to the silver grey of the Enterprise
01:18:23just how copper and bronze she actually is.
01:18:26And again, I can't believe I'm saying this,
01:18:27James Bond's Lotus Turbo Espirit thing car.
01:18:31The producers experimented with loads of different colour palettes
01:18:34to get the perfect feeling for it.
01:18:36And in the end, they wanted something that harked back to the 1970s,
01:18:40and they went to this car and its weird colour scheme and thought,
01:18:44you know what, that'll work for a big starship.
01:18:48Don't know why, but they did.
01:18:50Number two, from another mother.
01:18:52All right, the elephant in the room of Star Trek Discovery
01:18:54that I have already touched upon is that it's very easy to sit there and go,
01:18:57hmm, this prequel series to the original Star Trek has one glaring flaw,
01:19:02and that's that it looks nothing like the era it's supposed to be set in.
01:19:05We have seen examples of the mid-23rd century,
01:19:08and they don't look like this.
01:19:10And the thing is, it's so easy to dismiss all of that as just like,
01:19:13as a mistake, as a goof, as a gaffe,
01:19:15as the producers being so intent on making something that looked really nice
01:19:18that they strayed away from the franchise's origins
01:19:21and did not care what nerds like me or you would think about that.
01:19:24But the truth is, not quite that.
01:19:27They are very aware of what they're doing,
01:19:29and they have reasons that they've done it that way.
01:19:32The reasoning is, and I hope you're sitting down for this,
01:19:34that Discovery was produced at a completely different shipyard
01:19:38to all the other ships in the fleet.
01:19:41The Enterprise has nice, round nacelles.
01:19:42They would become the standard we would get used to in this timeframe,
01:19:45but no, Discovery does not,
01:19:47because somebody else designed it and somebody else built it,
01:19:50and they were experimenting with new forms of propulsion technology,
01:19:53not just the bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop spore drive thing.
01:19:56Everything, everything was an experiment, everything was a test,
01:19:59everything was new, and everything was different.
01:20:01Intentionally.
01:20:02Now, you might not believe that, and I might not believe that, my theory is just that they
01:20:06designed a really cool looking Starship and went, ha, who cares, it's just a bit of
01:20:11television, but that is the reason they have given, and thus, it is canon.
01:20:17Number one, my god, that's a big ship.
01:20:20Ah yes, another favourite of ours here on the series, inconsistent facts regarding the
01:20:26size of a ship in Star Trek.
01:20:28You love this record, we play it all the time.
01:20:30Alright, so first and foremost, the actual size of the USS Discovery has never been discussed
01:20:35on screen, thus there is no official thing we have for its size, but there have been
01:20:39several bits of supporting material that have gone along with the show that state it is
01:20:43a whopping 750 metres long.
01:20:50That is far.
01:20:52That is, for reference, about twice the length of the original USS Enterprise.
01:20:56That is about 70 metres longer than the Enterprise A. That is absurd.
01:21:03And yeah, the really funny thing about this, my favourite part of this, in fact, is that
01:21:07the show has specifically stated that there are 136 crew members aboard, and just for
01:21:12reference, the Enterprise D, which is smaller than Discovery, has over a thousand people
01:21:18on board, and we've literally done a video about how you could live on that ship and
01:21:22conceivably never bump into another member of the crew.
01:21:26So this is wrong.
01:21:28Now in fairness, there is one or two theories about this and one or two explanations of
01:21:31it.
01:21:32First of all, yes, the cells account for absolutely loads of that.
01:21:34They are incredibly long and extend way beyond the deck of the ship itself, but the one given
01:21:39on screen, the most interesting one, is by Saru, who says that Discovery is outfitted
01:21:44for over 300 specific, discrete scientific missions, which kind of leads to the idea
01:21:50that, you know, Stamets Lab, there's like 300 different versions of that room, all for
01:21:56different things, it's just they haven't needed to use any of them yet.
01:21:59Discovery has almost limitless breakout potential depending on what mission it's needed for,
01:22:03but so far all we've seen is it jumping around the Klingon War and chasing after a red beacon
01:22:08and then jumping into the future and everybody wearing the long, wrong uniforms.
01:22:13So there you go.
01:22:14What we picked up on that, by the way, I was so busy thinking about how long the ship was,
01:22:17I thought I said long instead of wrong and just only managed to put, it's, you know,
01:22:21people think this is an easy job, it's, it really is.
01:22:25Ten amazing things, what are the titles of these, that you need to know about the USS
01:22:30Excelsior slash secrets or something.
01:22:34Number ten, whatever this says.
01:22:36Yes, now I'm sure whatever headline that was there, Paul was very, very witty, very clever,
01:22:39however I don't, I can't read, I can't read Japanese, so I'll never know.
01:22:43All right, so a bit of back story for you, the USS Excelsior was originally christened
01:22:47the USS Valiant, it was described in the script work for Star Trek 3 as a superstar ship,
01:22:52a new queen of space.
01:22:55Now the vast majority of the work on the ship was done by ILM, which is not really how they'd
01:22:59done things in the past, they'd done drawings and stuff in-house, but ILM took on the bulk
01:23:03of this and instead of doing concept art, they made loads and loads of physical models
01:23:08so they could study them from every different angle.
01:23:10Now they were all very different, very wild, very radical, but the description they had
01:23:13to work with was something that had to look like it was new, it was sleek, and it was,
01:23:17well, the queen of space.
01:23:19Now what's either very, very good or very, very disappointing, depending on your point
01:23:22of view, was that the ship they selected from all of these different models was the one
01:23:26Leonard Nimoy described as the most Starfleet-looking of the lot of them, which yes, feels like
01:23:30a little bit of a cop-out that could have done something brave and bold and ambitious,
01:23:34but it did have a slight twist on it.
01:23:36According to ILM model maker Bill George, he was absolutely obsessed with Japanese design
01:23:41and Japanese architecture at the time, so his model, which he produced, which ended
01:23:45up being the Excelsior that we all know and love, was just simply what he imagined the
01:23:50Enterprise would look like if it was built by the Japanese.
01:23:54Uh-huh!
01:23:55Number 9, Models Inc.
01:23:56Actually one thing ILM did learn from their time working on Star Trek was that when the
01:24:00Enterprise A refit model was required, it was an absolute nightmare.
01:24:04It weighed a ton, it was impossible to photograph because of the materials used on it, so when
01:24:08they built the Excelsior, they deliberately made it incredibly light and incredibly, incredibly
01:24:13good in front of a camera.
01:24:14But what about all those study models, Adam, you were just talking about those, what happened
01:24:18to all those mad, crazy little art projects that ILM made before finally settling on the
01:24:22design of the Excelsior?
01:24:24What happened to them?
01:24:25I thought Star Trek couldn't abide waste if they threw them in the bin!
01:24:28Well, no, they didn't.
01:24:29They had all these random Starfleet designs just lying around, so when it came time to
01:24:36get loads of random props for Star Trek The Next Generation, guess what they used?
01:24:40The episode Unification Part 2 at the Surplus Depot at Quaalor 2, if you really squint and
01:24:46really up the brightness on your monitor, you can see several of the discarded Excelsior
01:24:51style design models, which never ever made it into reality.
01:24:55You weren't supposed to be able to see them, so they thought they would just get away with
01:24:59doing that, of course not predicting that in like, what, 20 years time, big nerds with
01:25:03nice high-end cameras and photography degrees would be able to pick them out.
01:25:07Oh, and also in there is one of the concept models for Star Trek Planet of the Titans,
01:25:11which was, you know, we did this whole thing about it, it was this concept from the 70s
01:25:14that was going to be a new show for the Phase 2, and then parts of it ended up being the
01:25:18most shi- I'm not getting into it now, but the shit was that.
01:25:21Oh, and because the Star Trek producers are incredibly cheeky, this one here, this specific
01:25:25model that was christened the USS Alka-Seltzer.
01:25:28Ask your parents.
01:25:29Number 8, The Great N-Experiment.
01:25:31I like that one, I like that one for it, that's good.
01:25:33Now between its debut in the search for Spock and its proper arrival into Star Trek in the
01:25:38Undiscovered Country, the Excelsior-class ship, and specifically again the USS Excelsior,
01:25:42went through some very small little design changes.
01:25:45Nothing you would have really noticed, and it was in the background of Star Trek's
01:25:484 and 5 completely unchanged, but by the time the Undiscovered Country came around, they
01:25:51changed the bridge because ILM felt it was too big, and there was tiny little additions
01:25:55and subtractions across the primary hull and the back of the... the arsehole.
01:26:01But one big change was its transition from the NX-2000, to denote that it was an experimental
01:26:06vessel, to NCC-2000, to denote that it was just another ship in the fleet.
01:26:11Now while of course the NX thing is an established part of Star Trek canon now, predominantly
01:26:15with the Defiant and the Enterprise from the show Enterprise, the Excelsior was the first
01:26:19ship to ever actually get that.
01:26:22In fact if you've ever actually wondered what the whole NCC thing is about, Star Trek
01:26:25the original series production designer Matt Jeffries said that it's to do with American
01:26:30naval tradition, like the N means the Navy, the C means commercial, and then he just added
01:26:35a random extra C on to make it feel more fun, and spacey, and then they've got NX because
01:26:40the N stands for Navy, and the X genuinely just means experimental.
01:26:44Number 7, fire apart then!
01:26:46Oh this is some... this is some wonderfully nitpicky stuff, you remember when they introduced
01:26:50the Excelsior and it was called the Big Experiment, do you remember why that was?
01:26:54No, not because the captain had a moustache, because it had transwarp drive.
01:26:59Now what do they mean by that?
01:27:00Because transwarp drive's been a thing in so many iterations of Star Trek and it's always
01:27:03meant different things, well, they never actually tell you in the search for Spock, they just
01:27:08laugh at the idea that somebody could try and escape them with warp drive.
01:27:12It's a line, I love this, it's my favourite scene in Star Trek actually, they're stealing
01:27:16the Enterprise from space doc, what is it?
01:27:17Now if he tries to get away with warp drive, he's really in for a shock.
01:27:22Now what we do sort of know from Star Trek is that transwarp is just the ultimate pretty
01:27:26much form of propulsion, it can get you from pretty much point A in the Alpha Quadrant
01:27:30to point D wherever the hell Voyager was in the end of one episode, so if Starfleet had
01:27:35that it would have completely changed pretty much everything that ever happened in the
01:27:38subsequent shows, but apparently it's all a big failure.
01:27:41Now I've got here the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual, which is one of the ultimate
01:27:45bibles for producing these videos, and it says, while the attempt to surpass the primary
01:27:49warp field efficiency barrier with the transwarp development project in the early 2280s proved
01:27:54unsuccessful, the pioneering achievements in warp power generation and field coil design
01:27:59eventually led to the upgraded Excelsior and Ambassador class starships.
01:28:05That's deliberately vague.
01:28:07Now I'm not going to get into the whole thing about how transwarp is a thing in the Kelvin
01:28:10universe and there was a reference to that but it was cut and they just called it warp
01:28:13but even though loads of the things that actually happen in these films are clearly
01:28:16transwarp and not regular warp, we're not getting into that, that's for another video.
01:28:20Number six, up your shaft.
01:28:21Okay, right, I love this.
01:28:23In the episode Evolution of The Next Generation, Data says there has not been a system-wide
01:28:29technological failure on a starship in 79 years.
01:28:34Just a good random throwaway bit of dialogue, isn't it?
01:28:37No, it's a direct reference to the stealing the Enterprise scene from The Search for Spock.
01:28:41Now the reason the stealing Enterprise scene works is though everybody's on the same team
01:28:44and we're all Starfleet and we're all, you know, we're all one of the guys, etc.
01:28:49Every single person on that ship is incredibly dislikable.
01:28:52You've got James B. Sicking here who is honestly one of my favourite one-time ever performances
01:28:57in Star Trek as well as Miguel Ferrer who, despite the fact that Paul's listed him as
01:29:01being in Robocop and Mulan, is of course best known for Twin Peaks.
01:29:06But the single best one-time ever performance on board the Excelsior in that film is by
01:29:10none other than Frank Force, who you know as Leonard Nimoy.
01:29:15Yeah, because the thing is he's not supposed to be in The Search for Spock, is he?
01:29:18Because he's not actually Spock, he's just like a big, like, proto-Vulcan, really weirdly
01:29:23horny and aggressive Vulcan on the Genesis planet.
01:29:26But he does feature in the film as Frank Force because he is the voice of the ship's computer,
01:29:32who Scotty says up your shaft to.
01:29:34Just a good, good insult, isn't it?
01:29:37Up your, up your shaft.
01:29:39One of those ones that only works in Scottish.
01:29:41Up your, up your shaft.
01:29:42Number five, our obligatory reused set entry.
01:29:45Now if you've watched these videos before, and let's face it, you've watched these videos
01:29:49before, you know that we like to point out all the reused sets and props and whatever
01:29:53that you can see in one part of one ship and not if you just sort of squint and turn your
01:29:56head, the exact same part of another ship.
01:29:58And of course there is an entry for the Excelsior in that.
01:30:01Now the Excelsior, as it appears in The Undiscovered Country, which is of course the definitive
01:30:04film appearance of that ship, is a redress set from the next generation, which was itself
01:30:10a redress set of the Enterprise A's bridge from the final frontier.
01:30:15Got it?
01:30:16That's all, that's all well and good.
01:30:17But a problem arose when they needed to reuse the Excelsior's bridge for the Voyager episode
01:30:21flashback because they had reused the Excelsior bridge about a million times by that point.
01:30:27It had been the Enterprise B in Star Trek Generations, it had been the USS Prometheus,
01:30:32it had been the Zosa, and it had been a Romulan warbird in Deep Space Nine.
01:30:36According to Star Trek Voyager production designer Richard James, they went and tried
01:30:39to find any bits of leftover just wall or console that were kicking about in Paramount's
01:30:45lot.
01:30:46They found like two or three bits of console that were like redressed to look like Klingon
01:30:49things but pretty much ended up having to build the whole thing from scratch all over
01:30:53again.
01:30:54Now I just want to give credit where it's due, they did a really good job of recreating
01:30:57that bridge in flashback, given they were now working with a television budget rather
01:31:00than a movie one.
01:31:01But if you look closely you can see that there's carpet instead of that nice metallic floor
01:31:05and also the captain's chair is weirdly crap.
01:31:08Number four, that's an old ship.
01:31:11Alright, now anybody who watches a lot of Star Trek will know that the Excelsior-class
01:31:14ship pops up a lot across the next generation and then in the Dominion Wars and of course
01:31:19even finds itself a little feature in Voyager.
01:31:21Now I'm not even going to try and do off the top of my head all of its appearances
01:31:25because I've got them written down.
01:31:26You've got the USS Fearless in Where No One Has Gone Before, the USS Repulse in The
01:31:30Child, the USS Potemkin in Ethics, the USS Cairo in Chain of Command, the USS Crazy Horse
01:31:37in Descent, the USS Gorkon in Pre-emptive Strike, pretty much all of that is stock footage
01:31:42of the USS Hood from Encounter at Farpoint but all of them were Excelsior-class ships.
01:31:47Fifty episodes in total you can catch a glimpse of an Excelsior-class starship which is four
01:31:51more than Nog.
01:31:53Number three, to be or not to be.
01:31:55Now while we don't actually see the Enterprise B until Star Trek Generations which is of
01:31:59course at the very end of the next generation's run, it was assumed from the very conceptual
01:32:04stages of that show that the second Enterprise was going to be an Excelsior-class starship.
01:32:09That's why it's on the wall.
01:32:10This is obviously common sense as it became a major workhorse of Starfleet but also quite
01:32:14cost effective because they already had a nice, lovely, big, movie studio quality model
01:32:19of an Excelsior-class starship.
01:32:21The Excelsior.
01:32:22Now I'll hold my hands up, I missed this the first couple of times I watched that film
01:32:25but they actually made some fairly major modifications to the actual shape of the ship.
01:32:30Most notably that, I know what you call it, it's got booty now hasn't it, it's got cake.
01:32:35Dat wagon.
01:32:36They've also got new caps on the warp nacelles, added impulse engines and they painted the
01:32:41thing like a weirdy purple-y colour rather than it's traditional blue.
01:32:46Now of course they were very sensible about all this, all the changes they made, all the
01:32:49additions were only supposed to be temporary and they were added in a way that meant they
01:32:53could just be removed as soon as they needed to be without damaging the model but, no I'm
01:32:58kidding, they planned to do that but they worked out that if they tried to pull any
01:33:02of that off at any point they were going to break it so it stayed like that forever.
01:33:06Just reading here that apparently it was sold for auction in 2006 for 132,000 US dollars.
01:33:15Wow.
01:33:16Number two, Tuvok's rusty memory.
01:33:21Now owing to those modifications, which they absolutely could not change, they had to build
01:33:24a brand new model of the Excelsior for the Voyager episode flashback.
01:33:28Now just, if you've not seen that episode, it's a flashback to when Tuvok was apparently
01:33:32on board the USS Excelsior during the events of the Undiscovered Country.
01:33:36It starts, you know, it's still got that whole bit with the big shockwave through space and
01:33:41SHIELDS TURN HER INTO THE WAVE, all that bit, it's still got that in it but then there's
01:33:44additional things to tell you what happened between that and them getting to everybody's
01:33:48rescue at the end of the film.
01:33:49Oh and they also fix, they fix this thing don't they, how he's there and then he disappears
01:33:54in the film but they actually add a bit where he runs back to his console just to fix that
01:33:58little plot hole.
01:33:59It's quite clever.
01:34:00Now because they had a much smaller budget and a very small time frame which to remake
01:34:03this ship, both the physical model of the ship and the bridge ended up being quite different
01:34:07to what's in the film.
01:34:08The ship is skinnier and has a bit more light up stuff and the bridge model is a little
01:34:12bit smaller and like I said before, it's got a carpet for some reason.
01:34:16Also Tuvok's there.
01:34:18One thing that they did, I don't know why they did this, this, this is Lieutenant Valtin
01:34:23who in the Voyager episode, he's a major part of what happens, he gives Tuvok this brain
01:34:26disease but he dies in the episode, that's the sad thing that happened.
01:34:31The thing is though, at the end of the Undiscovered Country, he's there, he's alive, I get your
01:34:39retcon things, but why would you kill a man who's in another scene?
01:34:45Now I'm saying all that, the whole point of Flashback is that Tuvok has this brain
01:34:49disease so it might just be that he's remembering it wrong and really Valtin's still alive
01:34:52because I mean of course he is, he's at the little Kitima thing at the end of the
01:34:55film so, I don't know, imagine when he gets back to the Alpha Quadrant though and he bumps
01:34:59into him like, no way!
01:35:01Number one, fictional fictional history.
01:35:03Now weirdly, Sulu being captain of the Excelsior was a thing that was written into the Wrath
01:35:08of Calm but eventually taken out of that script and not fully realised until like the
01:35:12later films when he is literally captain of the Excelsior.
01:35:15And despite all this and the fact he got a really prominent role in the Undiscovered
01:35:18Country, all the adventures of the Excelsior pretty much take place off screen, like we
01:35:23hear about them cataloguing gaseous anomalies in Beta Quadrant and then they spanned on
01:35:28it in Voyager as they rush through that nebula and blow up them Klingons but that's it,
01:35:32for such an iconic ship, for something that had such a major role in Star Trek, what did
01:35:36it do?
01:35:37I don't know!
01:35:38But, and we do like to occasionally pull from non-canon, beta canon sources for all of this,
01:35:42Sulu's adventures aboard the Excelsior were part of a really cool book series called The
01:35:46Lost Era.
01:35:47It depicts the death of its original captain, Sulu taking command, all the fun stuff they
01:35:51get up to before the Excelsior's eventual destruction in a temporal rift at the hands
01:35:57of this guy!
01:35:59From Deep Space Nine!
01:36:00Oh my god, it gets destroyed at him, do they all die?
01:36:03No, no, no, no, it's fine, they all, like, Sulu and Rand and obviously Valtean disease
01:36:07still alive, they all get rescued by Sulu, just not that one, that's Sulu from the
01:36:13Enterprise B.
01:36:14There are ten secrets of the Danube-class runabout.
01:36:19Number ten, big little ships.
01:36:21The Danube-class runabout was created as a way of getting the Deep Space Nine crew, and
01:36:27the writers, off the space station from time to time.
01:36:30As Star Trek was wont to do in those times, the first intention was to take a pre-existing
01:36:35model and use it for this runabout.
01:36:39Their first decision was to use the executive shuttle from Star Trek VI The Undiscovered
01:36:43Country that had been designed by John Goodson and built by Industrial Light and Magic and
01:36:47convert that to the runabout.
01:36:49This shuttle had only made a single appearance before this in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered
01:36:54Country.
01:36:55Now, it would turn up again in Star Trek Generations, and had recently been refit in The Next Generation
01:37:01to become the USS Janolan in the episode Relics, so it was considered a really good candidate
01:37:07as it wasn't massively familiar with the audience.
01:37:10Under the supervision of DS9 production designer Herman Zimmerman, illustrators Jim Martin
01:37:15and Rick Sternbach set to work adapting the executive shuttle to become this new runabout.
01:37:21The runabout cockpit set was going to be required before a miniature was required, so they retrofit
01:37:28the forward-sloping windows and side airlocks of the executive shuttle to fit their new
01:37:33runabout.
01:37:34As it happened, though, they decided not to go with the executive shuttle in the end and
01:37:39designed a new ship.
01:37:41Because work had already been locked in on this shape of the cockpit, Martin and Sternbach
01:37:47basically retrofit a ship around that cockpit, which eventually gave us our more recognisable
01:37:54Danube-class.
01:37:559.
01:37:56Aronoko Flow
01:37:58Early scripts for DS9 referred to these ships as runabout-class vessels, but the 1994 edition
01:38:04of the Star Trek Encyclopedia by Michael and Denise Okuda named them Danube-class.
01:38:09This would eventually be said on screen in the season 4 episode Hippocratic Oath.
01:38:14The Danube-class designation of course refers to the Danube River, which is the second longest
01:38:18river in Europe, but also possibly refers to the Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, which
01:38:24featured prominently in 2001 A Space Odyssey, which had long been a go-to for easter eggs
01:38:31for Star Trek.
01:38:32Individual runabouts were named after rivers.
01:38:34They were given their own USS prefix and they were given an NCC and an individual registry.
01:38:41They were named like the Mekong, the Gander, the Ganges, the Aronoko, the Yangtze-Qiang,
01:38:47the Rio Grande and the Yukon.
01:38:50In production notes it was often said that each of these runabouts might be assigned
01:38:54to a particular starship, or in this case, space station.
01:38:58There was also an intention originally that there would be some runabouts named after
01:39:02alien rivers.
01:39:03There was sort of an unwritten rule at the time that for every three names, two might
01:39:08be earth-centric but one should be alien, therefore giving the impression that the Federation
01:39:13was not simply comprised of earth.
01:39:17Michael Piller, however, would explain that while the intention was there to name some
01:39:21runabouts after alien rivers, often just to include an alien river name would involve
01:39:27a little bit of ledger domain in the script that, most of the time, wasn't called for.
01:39:32Number 8, Cockpit Visit.
01:39:35The cockpit was created by set designer Joseph Hodges under the supervision of production
01:39:39designer Herman Zimmerman.
01:39:41Unlike a lot of standing sets at the time for Star Trek, this one actually contained
01:39:47working monitors that would allow graphics to be shown on screen.
01:39:51These were created by Michael and Denise Okuda and could be played live during filming.
01:39:55There would also be traditional backlit projections as well, aka Okudagrams.
01:40:00There were two fully functioning consoles as well, one for ops and con, which is running
01:40:05the vessel completely, and then one for tactical and engineering.
01:40:10Another feature of the runabout cockpit was its ability to move.
01:40:13By that I mean it was constructed in such a way that it could be shifted around the
01:40:17set so that you could have a continuous shot in those rare times when you would see crew
01:40:22walking through an airlock and into the runabout itself and vice versa.
01:40:27Also it could shake when the situation called for it, when it was under attack, by which
01:40:32I mean you would have stagehands at either side just kind of gently vibrate the thing.
01:40:36It would go through a few upgrades as well throughout the years, including refinements
01:40:40to the transporter bay and an addition of a standard console at the back of the cockpit
01:40:45as well.
01:40:46Along the way, blast windows were added to the side of the runabout as well.
01:40:51That was actually for real world practical reasons, because quite frankly it became a
01:40:55bit of a pain in the hook to try and get moving stars in these windows every time you had
01:41:00to film on the set.
01:41:02So initially they used something like beige wood panelling in the episode Whispers, before
01:41:07getting a more stylised airlock type covering in the episode Crossover.
01:41:12Like nearly every other Star Trek set, it would be redressed and reused several times
01:41:17for several different vessels, but we'll come to that.
01:41:21Number 7.
01:41:22Time AFT-er time.
01:41:24While the runabouts were clearly a staple of Deep Space Nine, they did turn up from
01:41:28time to time in other series, most notably in the Next Generation episode Timescape.
01:41:34Timescape was created late in the Next Generation's run, but early in Deep Space Nine's run,
01:41:40so the producers took this as an opportunity to amortise some of the costs from DS9 and
01:41:45cover it with the Next Generation's budget.
01:41:48For example, while Herman Zimmerman's team built the cockpit over the course of seven
01:41:53weeks, Richard James' team, which was brought in to build the AFT section, which would be
01:41:58seen in the episode Timescape, had only nine days to do it.
01:42:02It was used quite extensively in that episode, and then never seen again on Deep Space Nine.
01:42:09A partial part of one set was seen in the episode The Visitor, but other than that,
01:42:14it just wasn't used, which was quite confusing as they had gone to the issue of making it.
01:42:21Richard James' AFT compartment set did see some use in Deep Space Nine.
01:42:25It was redressed and used as guest quarters on the USS Prometheus in the episode Second
01:42:30Sight, and also in the episode Paradise was used as the interior of the SS Santa Maria.
01:42:37Number 6.
01:42:39Starship side piece.
01:42:40If we go back to the original series, remember there was a very impressive full-scale model
01:42:46of the USS Galileo built as a shuttle for that ship, and then after that it became de
01:42:53rigueur for having shuttles built for productions.
01:42:56For example, Star Trek V, The Final Frontier, and of course, Star Trek The Next Generation.
01:43:01Deep Space Nine presented a new issue with this, because Deep Space Nine's Goddard-class
01:43:06shuttle Type 6 was just over 6 metres long, however, the Danube-class runabout was said
01:43:13to be about 23 metres long, so frankly, they just weren't going to be building a one-to-one
01:43:19model of this thing.
01:43:20The most frequently seen exterior part of the ship that was built was the hatch that
01:43:25was first used in the episode Emissary for when Sisko and Jadzee are on the wormhole
01:43:31alien's planet, and also quite often seen attached to the docking ports of Deep Space
01:43:36Nine.
01:43:37This particular hatch is one of those things that would quite frequently be reused and
01:43:42redressed to become the various alien ships that would be docked at the pylons as well.
01:43:48A larger piece of the runabout was constructed for the season one episode Battle Lines.
01:43:54For this, a chunk of the exterior of the USS Yangtze-Qiang was built and shown crashed
01:44:01on this planet in the Gamma Quadrant alongside a Type 6 shuttle's nacelle, much to the
01:44:08chagrin of Doug Drexler.
01:44:10We all knew it was wrong, we pointed it out, but the feeling was that it was general texture
01:44:14and the camera would never see it.
01:44:17Ha.
01:44:18Ha.
01:44:195.
01:44:20Convenient Modular Design
01:44:22According to the Deep Space Nine Technical Manual by Herman Zimmerman, Rick Sternbach
01:44:26and Doug Drexler, the Danube-class runabout was designed at Utopia Planitia shipyards
01:44:31in 2365.
01:44:32It was designed to perform rapid-response scientific expedition transportation, and
01:44:38could be used as a temporary base of operations if the need be.
01:44:42This role was aided by the modular design of the runabout.
01:44:46You had the main spine which ran the length of the ship.
01:44:49This consisted of the two nacelles, the warp core, two impulse modules as well.
01:44:55There would also be the cockpit segment, the cargo bay segment in the middle, and that
01:44:59ever-elusive aft living area as well.
01:45:03On top of this, there was the removable sensor bar, which was first seen in the episode Past
01:45:07Prologue.
01:45:09This was actually created so that there would be an easy distinction when there was a runabout
01:45:15chase in this episode between the Ganges and the Yangtze-Qiang.
01:45:19Funnily enough, this led to a little bit of an issue in its only appearance in the
01:45:24Star Trek Voyager episode Non Seceter.
01:45:27In this episode, for the bulk of the episode, the USS Yosemite is shown without the sensor
01:45:34bar, apart from one scene of reused footage from Deep Space Nine where the sensor bar
01:45:40suddenly appears.
01:45:42Whoops.
01:45:434.
01:45:44Padding This Out
01:45:45Another tidbit from the Star Trek Deep Space Nine Technical Manual gives us a little bit
01:45:49of information about the landing pads that were often shown in Deep Space Nine.
01:45:54These were given various names, for example, Landing Pad.
01:45:58Later on, this would be given various letters, for example, Landing Pad C. You would have
01:46:03Runabout Pad A, B, or C, and also there were versions of them which had numbers as well.
01:46:10According to the manual, Deep Space Nine housed these runabouts in various maintenance and
01:46:14launch bays located around the habitat ring.
01:46:17The living quarters around these bays were converted into engineering or ops-style bays,
01:46:23and also anything nearby was extra padded so that they would be shielded from the noise
01:46:29of these runabouts taking off at every hour of the day and night.
01:46:32Though stock footage of a runabout taking off from that hydraulic lift would be shown
01:46:37throughout all seven seasons of Deep Space Nine, the interior of the landing bay was
01:46:42only really shown in detail in one episode, which was the sixth season episode in The
01:46:46Pale Moonlight.
01:46:47This is when Senator Vreenak's shuttle arrives and de-cloaks inside the bay and you can see
01:46:53a runabout behind it.
01:46:54Doug Drexler designed the Romulan shuttle itself, actually to resemble his pet parrot.
01:47:00Both the model and the landing pad were then constructed by Tony Menninger of Brazil Fabrication
01:47:06and Design, who created the model, the pad and a fully working landing bay as well.
01:47:12Number three.
01:47:13Honey, I shrunk the runabout.
01:47:15No, that's not actually a pun this time.
01:47:17That was the working title for the episode that would eventually go on to be called One
01:47:22Little Ship.
01:47:23You know the episode where the runabout gets shrunk down to a tiny size and then slaughters
01:47:29an entire contingent of Jem'Hadar warriors that had taken over the USS Defiant.
01:47:34You know.
01:47:35Comedy.
01:47:36Funnily enough, this story had actually started as a pitch by writer Rene Echevarria for Star
01:47:42Trek The Next Generation that just couldn't find purchase within that series.
01:47:46According to scientific advisor Andre Bourmanis, the episode's science was a little bit of
01:47:52a stretch.
01:47:53For years, I'd been dreading the day the writers would decide to do some version of Fantastic
01:47:57Voyage.
01:47:58I didn't know whether I'd want to ask for a credit or a disclaimer on the episode.
01:48:02Despite the in-universe technical issues of shrinking a runabout, something about a subspace
01:48:07compression anomaly, apparently the episode was an absolute hoot to write and film.
01:48:14According to Terry J. Erdman and Paula Block's Star Trek Deep Space Nine companion, the way
01:48:18that the idea was sold to Ira Stephen Bear was to construct a little model of a runabout
01:48:24and hang it with a fishing wire outside his window.
01:48:29Number two.
01:48:30Running gag.
01:48:31As we've already mentioned, sets in Star Trek just get reused and redressed all the
01:48:35time.
01:48:36It makes sense.
01:48:37It saves money.
01:48:38And of course, the runabout was no exception.
01:48:41It got shown in some variation or another in 79 episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine,
01:48:48in that one episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, two episodes of Star Trek Voyager,
01:48:52and would also be seen in the film Star Trek Insurrection.
01:48:56For the opening episode of Star Trek Voyager, Caretaker, the interior of the runabout was
01:49:01given a major overhaul that included motion picture-era backlit graphics so that it could
01:49:07stand in for the Valjean, the Maquis raider that Chakotay, B'Elanna and Tuvok were lost
01:49:13in.
01:49:14After this appearance, it would then go on to appear in two episodes of Deep Space Nine
01:49:18with those modifications, specifically to become a Terran raider in the episodes Through
01:49:23the Looking Glass and Shattered Mirror.
01:49:26Like that Voyager episode, this would utilise Mike Okuda's 23rd century graphics style
01:49:32and a lot of masking tape that made sure that it looked like, in no way, the runabout interior
01:49:38with a lot of masking tape all over it.
01:49:40Finally, the most radical redesign came for Star Trek Insurrection.
01:49:44At this point, it was totally repainted, the graphics were switched out, the front windows
01:49:49were switched out, but it's still recognisable as that runabout.
01:49:55As you can see, the overall shape, when you've watched as much Star Trek as we have, is a
01:49:59bit like, that's the Rio Grande.
01:50:031.
01:50:04Survivors
01:50:05Unlike Star Trek Voyager's seemingly endless supply of shuttles that, you know, they'd
01:50:10blow up and be back again the next week, Deep Space Nine was fairly consistent with when
01:50:15something was destroyed, it stayed destroyed.
01:50:18The problem with that is that, over the seven seasons, there were ten named runabouts assigned
01:50:24to Deep Space Nine, and only three of them survived through to the finale.
01:50:29The list of named runabouts destroyed or abandoned over the course of Star Trek Deep Space Nine's
01:50:34run include the USS Gander, the USS Ganges, the USS Mekong, the USS Orinoco, the USS Shenandoah,
01:50:42the USS Yangtze-Qiang, and the USS Yukon.
01:50:45For the record, the only three that survived the events of Deep Space Nine were the USS
01:50:50Rubicon, the USS Volga, and the USS Rio Grande, the only Danube-class runabout to make it
01:50:58all the way through to what you leave behind.
01:51:00The frequent turnover of runabouts actually caused headaches for some of the writers as
01:51:05the show went along.
01:51:07Rene Tavaria recalled trying to use the USS Ganges in a Season 7 episode, despite the
01:51:14fact it had been destroyed five years earlier in the episode Armageddon Game.